Residential real estate brokerages aren’t typically located in prime downtown storefront space, but Austin has at least two enterprises with that appealing amenity.

Urbanspace, owned by Kevin Burns, operates expansive offices on West Fifth Street, which includes an interior design practice and home furnishings, while DEN Property Group at West Third and Guadalupe streets is both an office and an art gallery that includes selected compositions for sale.

Click to read more at Austin Business Journal. 

Williamson County and Hutto are working to finalize an economic development deal for the mixed-use Co-Op District, a 25-acre development that could create a new economic focal point in the small town northeast of Austin.

Plans call for a new city hall, library and private development such as apartments, restaurants, retail and office space, a movie theater and a hotel north of Highway 79 and west of downtown Hutto. In other words, it could be a pivotal step for the rapidly growing suburban community.

County commissioners are considering whether to create a special taxation zone for the project. Although they did not vote on the measure at their Tuesday meeting, County Judge Dan Gattis signaled the measure has support.

Click to read more at Austin Business Journal. 

More than five years have passed since I wrote about fledgling real estate development and brokerage company Capella Commercial LLC. A lot has happened since.

The firm has built more than 500,000 square feet of self storage in multiple locations across the Austin metro with another 500,000 square feet that will be completed around the country by the end of next year. Some of those projects are underway in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Birmingham, Alabama; and Nashville, Tennessee.

An industrial complex with more than 600,000 square feet of leasable space is set to rise on a 30-acre parcel of grassland just east of I-35 in Buda, south of Austin.

Exeter Property Group hopes to break ground on the first phase — a 300,000-square-foot building — in early 2018. Hays County has agreed to an incentives deal that would rebate 15 percent of the property taxes for the site at buildout, increasing to 30 percent once the developer finds a tenant with at least 50 employees.

Click to read more at Austin Business Journal.

Austin ranked No. 1 in the technology sector’s share of “major leasing activity” among 30 North American markets, according to a report by Los Angeles-based real estate giant CBRE Group Inc.

The Texas capital also ranked No. 6 in annual tech-job growth, No. 10 in both rent growth and net absorption of tech submarkets (northwest Austin) and No. 11 in overall tech office rent growth.

Released on Nov. 8 by CBRE Group Inc., the annual study measures the tech industry’s impact on office markets.

Click to read more at Austin Business Journal.