UT residential tower breaks ground
UT residential tower breaks ground
Austin Business Journal - 3:09 PM CDT Wednesday, September 19, 2007
A groundbreaking event was held today for 21 Rio, the 158-unit high-rise apartment development going up near the University of Texas campus.
At 21 stories, the project at Rio Grande and 21st Street will be the tallest in the West Campus area. The $44 million development will have one, two and three-bedroom units as well as about 4,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space. The developer, Cobalt Land Development Ltd., say the first occupants should be able to move in as early as spring 2009.
More than 100 people attended today's groundbreaking, including Austin Mayor Will Wynn, who lauded the project team for creating a dense, high-rise that will house a significant number of students.
"Whether the challenge is traffic or public safety or carbon emissions from vehicles and/or electricity generation that are causing global warming, the answer is to get a lot more people living a lot closer to where they work, shop, play, worship--and yes, go to school," says Wynn. "We need to replicate the 21 Rio model throughout West Campus and bring students back to the university area"
In 2004, the city of Austin approved the University Neighborhood Overlay, which allows for a total height of 175 feet in a limited part of West Campus. A variance was granted in February 2006 for 21 Rio to increase the height for this site to 220 feet. That enabled Cobalt to increase the number of units included in the plan.
Merriman Associates Architects designed the building.
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