After breaking ground recently on the long-delayed Hotel ZaZa and Gables Republic Square, developers have encountered a significant issue that could hold up the project, Austin Business Journal reported Tuesday. The site has been filling with water, possibly from an underground spring.
ABJ’s Jan Buchholz reported that water began seeping into the site at Fourth and Guadalupe after bulldozers dug into it in preparation for the building’s foundation. Construction crews are pumping out the water in a code-compliant manner, but the hole seems to be filling at a constant rate, Buchholz wrote.
Buccholz cited an unnamed real estate expert who stated that underground springs are a common issue for downtown builders, along with the constant seepage rate, to speculate that the water might be coming from one of them. No one from the joint developers of the luxury hotel and residential project—Dallas and Houston’s Z-Resorts Management and Atlanta’s Gables Residential—responded to inquiries about the issue, she reported.
• Hotel developer breaks ground in downtown Austin, discovers possible spring [Austin Business Journal]