A look inside Austin Proper, now (sort of) open

The long-awaited opening of Austin Proper Hotel and Residences is finally here—sort of. The downtown building, which broke ground in 2016, is open for a “preview phase,” which it announced late last month.

What, exactly, does that mean? you might be asking. Here’s the skinny: The hotel is operating at full service and hosting guests. Most of its rooms and suites aren open, with more opening every day. Two of its four planned restaurants and bars—The Peacock and Goldie’s—have opened, although Goldie’s is currently available to hotel guests and residents.

Speaking of residents: The company has been marketing and selling its 99 luxury residences pretty much from the get-go, and Proper Hospitality announced last February that 70 percent of its condos had already been sold at record-setting prices per square foot. Residents are scheduled to start moving in later this month.

The 33-story, 500,000-square-foot building was designed by New York-based Handel Architects. Located at 600 West Second Street, it’s the first Proper Hospitality location outside of California. In a November interview with Curbed Austin, the group’s president and co-founder, Brian De Lowe, explained that, from the team’s first property in San Francisco, “we picked places we knew and we liked,” he said, noting that he’s from Bay Area. The team chose to build in Austin, which he and other team members had come to know through visits and stays with friends over the years, for similar reasons—and because they saw a way to fill a need in downtown’s hospitality landscape.

“When I’d come to the city, I’d want to stay outside the [central business district], in neighborhoods with funkier, more soulful hotels. The thought was that most [visitors] want or need to be in the CBD, but there wasn’t a hotel that felt great to us. We felt the same way about San Francisco and Santa Monica and the other places we have hotels.”

Courtesy of Austin Proper

The group sought to create a place with “great style, great design and food and beverage, and cool programming and put it right in a main location in the center of town.” De Lowe also said that every property in its portfolio is different in style because they are all designed to reflect and inspired by their carefully chosen locations.

To that end, prominent designer Kelly Wearstler joined the team early on and spent much of the next six years of the project’s development getting to know Austin, literally inside and out. Wearstler took “many, many, many” trips to the city over that time, says De Lowe, “traveling to different neighborhoods, touring people’s homes to get a sense of the design , and to making sure that the product we built felt like Austin.”

At the same time, he said, Wearstler’s interpretation of the cities she designs in is always personal and unique: “She brings something totally new that you’ve never seen before but still feels very of the city you’re in,” he said. “She brings her own design to Austin style.”

Courtesy of Austin Proper

Courtesy of Austin Proper

Courtesy of Austin Proper

Austin Proper guest room detail

Wearstler was inspired by some of the city’s historic, Craftsman-style homes, and references Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts motifs, joinery techniques, textures, and materials, according to a press release. Of note in the new space are the lobby’s “monolithic wooden staircase covered in more than 60 conjoined vintage carpets topped with an assortment of monolith assorted pots by local ceramicist Rick Van Dyke,” it contineues, “to the five-foot-diameter light fixture whose neon accents recall Austin’s iconic neon signs.”

Courtesy of Austin Proper

The project is one of the key pieces in the redevelopment of the Downtown blocks that used to house the city’s former Green Water Treatment Plant. It will join the nearby West Second Street retail district, the Seaholm Power Plant Redevelopment, and the new Central Library in the now-bustling area; the tower also looks over Lady Bird Lake and is close to Downtown working spaces, including local Facebook and Google headquarters.

That locates Austin Proper just where its founders envisioned it: Right in the middle of a busy businesses district but not far from major tourist attractions. “There’s so much going on in Downtown Austin,” notes De Lowe, who cites its walkability as a major attraction. “We were excited about filling a void in the city.”

While new on the scene, he said, “our hotels feel very much part of the neighborhood,” citing street entrances to all their restaurants and bars as well as views from balconies over the sidewalks that allow visitors long views down major corridors.

In addition to its residences and four food and drink establishments, the luxury hotel has (or ultimately will have) 244 guest rooms and and suites, two elevated swimming pools, a full-service spa and wellness facility, nearly 14,000 square feet of “tech-enabled” meeting space, and a ballroom with 22-foot-tall, floor-to-ceiling windows.

Regular prices at the hotel will start at $350 per night.