My old hangout might finally get a new life. What a great spot and what a deal! Only a Californian could love $5000/mo to live by the railroad tracks & trestle.
http://www.mystatesman.com/business/apartment-project-set-for-old-treehouse-site-off-barton-springs-road/ZBEelQWXo0tgG6sgXOkIKK
For once I agree with Rod! I still remember about a decade ago when the site’s developer was originally planning to install condos “starting at $1 million” on it. Rents of “more than $5,000/month” aren’t quite as batshit-crazy, but unless they’ve somehow invented the mother of all soundproofing materials (and “vibrate-proof” ones) in the 10-year interim, I have no earthly idea who would want to live immediately adjacent to a heavy freight line. (Affluent families with kids seem like they’d be their target market, but I noticed their conspicuous lack of mention in the Statesman piece – probably because kids are hard enough to get to sleep without the entire home shaking to its core.) I suppose it helps slightly that the trains no longer blow their horns as they pass through every hour of every freakin’ night.
Also, I remember the last time around – when the BCNA made a considerable to-do over the city council’s decision then to interpret the site’s zoning in a particularly “creative” fashion, one that basically would’ve allowed the developers to plop a 150-foot-tall tower on the site – that some of the NA’s self-appointed detectives found out that the site’s financial backers are wealthy Europeans who clearly know jack about Austin real estate market realities. In this case they appear to have overlooked the fact that a half-dozen other high-end rental towers – ones considerably taller and better-located, either on the west end or Rainey St. – have gone up over the past decade (and that’s not even counting the rental units available in every condo tower in town).