Rainey Street 3.0
Construction has plagued the district for years but it’s almost done
By Sahar Chmais – Staff Writer, Austin Business Journal
Feb 18, 2025
Photo by Dave Creaney – Downtown’s Rainey Street Historic District seen from I-35.
Austin’s Rainey Street is about to emerge from a construction cocoon — solidifying its longtime transformation from a once sleepy, residential street into one of the densest areas in Texas, if not the country.
The district in downtown Austin has been years in the making. It was a hub of late-night entertainment and barhopping in the 2010s, and a flurry of high-rise construction in recent years has made it difficult for bars and businesses to bring in patrons.Once the dust settles, however, the new Rainey Street Historic District will become its own ecosystem. Thousands will call the area home, in addition to a mixture of hotels, offices, retailers, restaurants and a host of both daytime and nighttime activities. Plus, a trail system will connect the area to other parts of downtown.
Most of the current construction work is expected to end by early 2026, yielding a more permanent version of the long-evolving street.
“It’s not going to be like the homogenous city street with bars in it that Rainey was — that I fell in love with in 2012 – it’s not going to be that,” said Ben Seigel of longtime Rainey bar Banger’s. “But man, it’s going to be something really cool. (It’s) going to be an amazing thing for residents of the city, people visiting the city, to kind of interact with and get a real interesting taste of Austin.”
The new Rainey
About 7,500 residents will live in the small district that spans about a three-block radius, and it will serve approximately 10,000 people when calculating hotel guests.
The Rainey Street Historic District has about 2,600 finished condos and apartments — and about 2,100 more coming online, according to Urbanspace CEO Kevin Burns, who has played a significant role in the transformation of the area. High-rises under construction in the district include 700 River, Waterline, Travis and Paseo, in addition to the already built 44 East Ave, Vesper Residences, The Quincy and more.
The area will have plenty of parking, Burns said, though the district is ideally a place for people to walk to or use rideshare.
Photo by Dave Creaney – Business along Rainey Street.
More food and beverage concepts are also on tap, from coffee shops aimed at bringing in more daytime traffic to restaurants and bars that buzz at night. When all is said and done, there will be more bars in the district than there were before, according to Burns.
Burns’ company, Urbanspace, had the first condo tower listing in the early 2000s with the 13-story Milago. He credits the boom of development along Lady Bird Lake’s shore in the district to the success of Milago and the city’s foresight to rezone the once-residential area into the Central Business District.
Milago “proved that people were willing to buy condos in the area,” Burns said.
Burns purchased a site in 2006 that now houses his 56-story The Modern condo tower, and Urbanspace brokered more than half a dozen different sites in the district over the years, he said. The Modern, set to be complete this summer, will have over 300 condos designed to cater to a variety of customers, from the two penthouse suites to its 20 affordably priced units. Additionally, Urbanspace is contributing $1.3 million to the city’s affordable housing fund, as well as $500,000 to The Trail Foundation to complete the Rainey Street trailhead.
Photo by Dave Creaney – Kevin Burns at the top of The Modern in January.
Texas’ tallest tower, Waterline, will come online in the summer of 2026. It will feature the luxury 1 Hotel, as well as 700,000 square feet of office space, more than 350 apartments and about 30,000 square feet dedicated to retail, food and beverage business. Even a nominal percent of retail space plays a massive part in the tower because that’s what gives the building personality, said Seth Johnston, executive vice president of Lincoln Property Co., which is one of the tower developers.
Johnston said 1 Hotel will have its own restaurant. Meanwhile, the tower also has space for two restaurants on the ground floor that will be marketed and leased by Lincoln, though it’s still looking for restaurateurs. He said they’re looking for a restaurant with a “local feel and flare.” It would be ideal to have a place offering lunch and dinner, or it could be a late-night concept where, as the night draws in, the restaurant dims its lights, turns up the music and brings in a late-night crowd, he said.
“People call Austin an 18-hour-city — not quite yet a 24-hour city — but I think that this neighborhood could turn into a 24-hour neighborhood,” said Johnston.
Photo by Dave Creaney – A view of the Waterline in January.
Johnston declined to comment on how much a square foot of retail space will cost tenants.
Burns said for his tower, retail will go for about $50 to $60 per square foot, plus a percentage of sales. This is on par, if not cheaper, than retail rents in downtown Austin. “It’s a shared risk, shared reward,” he said.
The district is also supposed to be better connected to downtown soon through a phase of the Waterloo Greenway trail. One phase of the project is expected to connect Fourth Street to Lady Bird Lake — near Cesar Chavez Street — and be complete in the first half of 2026, said John Rigdon, chief planning and design officer for Waterloo Greenway.
Read the full article at Austin Business Journal »