Austin Proper hotel-condo development breaks ground

Austin will soon add more luxury condos and apartments to its ever-growing inventory. Crews broke ground Friday on Austin Proper Hotel and Residences, the 33-story, 500,000-square-foot tower to be built at West Second and Colorado streets, a few blocks from Lady Bird Lake.

In addition to its residential towers, the project will include 1.7 million square feet of mixed-use space, including offices (Google has been secured as the anchor tenant), ground floor retail and restaurants, Shoal Creek restoration, and the Second Street Bridge, which connects the Austin Public Library and the rest of the Seaholm District.

The Austin Proper project is the third of to have begun on four blocks of the city’s former Green Water Treatment Plant. The redevelopment project is intended to connect the West Second Street retail district, the Seaholm Power Plant Redevelopment, and the new Central Library—as well as, of course, bring in a lot of new condos and luxury hotel rooms.

One- to three-bedroom residences in the 921-2,608-square square-foot range are priced from $600,000 to $3 million; 3,425-6,789-square-foot penthouses cost $3 million to $8 million.

The building’s interiors will be by global brand Kelly Wearstler, who has been named as one of Architectural Digest’s Top 100 architects and interior designers, among other honors.