High Street Residential is developing The Shore, a 22-story luxury condominium.

For more than 20 years, the Rainey Street neighborhood of Austin, Texas, was an underdeveloped area on the south side of Town Lake that didn’t have much upside. But once the city of Austin rezoned the area, numerous developers bought the land there to cash in on the inevitable revitalization of the neighborhood.

Trammell Crow Co., a worldwide development and investment firm with headquarters in Dallas, jumped on the opportunity with The Shore, a 22-story luxury condominium development orchestrated through Trammell Crow’s subsidiary, High Street Residential (HSR).

“The condo market throughout the country is cyclical, so the first units that get delivered in this cycle will be the more successful projects,” Senior Development Manager Mark Fowler says. “Others that are just being contemplated now might not be successful, so timing is everything.”

The Shore, which offers access to Town Lake, a jogging trail and a fitness center, will have 192 units ranging in size from 500 to 1,600 square feet and priced from $150,000 to $1.3 million. Construction of the $45 million project started in September 2006 and is expected to last until July 2008, and residents will begin moving occupancy in March 2008. Fowler says all but four of the units have already been sold.

Sharing a Site
The Shore construction team will soon be sharing space with a team from JMI Realty, which is in the planning stage of Hotel Van Zandt, a 290-room full-service boutique hotel owned by Kimpton Boutique Hotel. Fowler says Trammell Crow expects its construction to be impacted, but until he is told of a start date for the hotel construction, he does not know how.

“Depending on the start time, it will impact us in different ways,” Fowler says. “We know they will be cutting off our access, and they will be under construction while we are moving people in. But it is kind of up in the air. It is definitely a moving target and a challenge.”

Even before construction on the hotel has begun, Trammell Crow has already had to redesign its water line, which originally was to go through the garage.

The company had to seek a separate easement to snake the line around the building and decreased the size of the garage. The company has also finished a water retention pond designed to serve the condominium and the hotel.

Trammell Crow in addition had to deal with a delay in the delivery of chilled water by the city. According to Fowler, the central system serves numerous buildings in the downtown area, but was not built to serve the other side of Waller Creek.

The rezoning that has spurred this redevelopment of the area has forced the city to extend the main line to the other side, and the line will have the capacity to serve multiple sites in the area.

However, it was not ready in time to meet The Shore’s construction schedule, and the city is about a month behind in its scheduled delivery. In the meantime, Trammell Crow is using temporary chillers to keep the building served with water.

Fowler says the company expects the city’s chilled water to be ready by Oct. 1. If they are not ready by that date, the city will pick up the tab for any temporary chilled water costs, according to Fowler.

‘Building Value’
Trammell Crow was founded in 1948 and has grown into one of the nation’s leading developers and investors in real estate.

“Our team is dedicated to building value for all of our clients through creative solutions and highly skilled, locally connected professionals in major cities in the United States, Canada and India,” the company says. “We serve users of, and investors in, office, industrial, retail, healthcare, student housing, on-airport distribution, multifamily residential and mixed-use projects.”

As of September 2006, Trammell Crow had more than $5 billion of development and new investments in process and nearly $3 billion of additional projects in the pipeline.

Trammell Crow says it employs experienced market leaders in 28 major cities and, as an independently operated subsidiary of CB Richard Ellis, has access to over 20,000 professionals within the world’s largest real estate services firm.

HSR is focused on resurrecting old or creating new neighborhoods to provide more environmentally sound, user-friendly communities, Trammell Crow says.

“We specialize in blending office, retail, housing and civic venues within organized public gathering spaces through our leading-edge master plan/master developer services and residential development experience,” the company adds.

“With the capability to develop unique mixed-use communities, such as urban infill, edge city and the adaptive re-use of historic buildings, we apply our strengths in neo-traditional planning, design and architecture to create these human-scale, immersive districts.”

HSR also says its ability to leverage Trammell Crow’s pool of talent and resources places it at the forefront of the residential and mixed-use industry.