Here's what the new Austin Convention Center could look like
Austinites are can now get a first look at the new Austin Convention Center.
"City staff and architects revealed renderings of the $1.6 billion Unconventional ATX project, showcasing the extensive expansion of the existing building in downtown on East Cesar Chavez Street, during a public meeting on Tuesday.
The existing center is scheduled to close this April to allow for demolition to begin. The $1.26 billion construction project is funded by the convention center's share of the city's hotel occupancy tax and its own revenue
'The redevelopment of the convention center will create a vital downtown amenity and urban connector,' Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said. 'With a design that emphasizes street-level openness and accessibility, vibrant public plazas, and pedestrian-friendly pathways, this transformation will enhance connectivity and inclusivity, creating a more accessible and engaging downtown experience for residents and visitors.'
Here's what we know.
The Austin Convention Center's makeover will nearly double its rentable square footage, expanding from 365,000 square feet to 620,000 square feet.
The update, designed through a joint venture of LMN Architects and Page Southerland Page, will feature more outdoor amenities such as open-air terraces and public plazas. According to the Austin Convention Center Department, it will also be the world's first zero-carbon-certified convention center.
The new center is intended to serve as a 'cultural hub' by connecting with the surrounding Waterloo Greenway and Palm Districts and showcasing art installations and interactive exhibits. It is also being designed to integrate with the ongoing Project Connect transportation projects in Austin.
This will be done in part with a $17.7 million investment in public art, the largest in Austin's history," according to the department.
Unconventional ATX will also reopen Third Street for multimodal traffic and enhance Second Street to make it more pedestrian-friendly.
'The new Austin Convention Center is more than a venue — it's a landmark that reflects our city's bold and creative spirit,' said Trisha Tatro, director of the Austin Convention Center Department. 'With its dynamic design, enhanced community access, and commitment to sustainability, this facility will set a new benchmark for convention spaces while strengthening Austin's reputation as a premier global destination.'
The Austin Convention Center will close for demolition in April of this year and construction will begin shortly after.
The expected completion date for construction is in the latter half of 2028, set to reopen in time for the 2029 spring festival season.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: First look: Austin Convention Center project renderings released
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Bloomberg
3 hours ago
- Bloomberg
Can Elon Musk Deliver With the Robotaxi Reveal?
Ben Kallo, Baird senior research analyst, talks about why he downgraded Tesla Inc. stock to neutral from outperform. Tesla is set to start its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas on June 12. Kallo says the the stock's valuation has "gotten ahead of itself" and the rollout will be harder than expected. He's on "Bloomberg Surveillance." (Source: Bloomberg)


WIRED
8 hours ago
- WIRED
As Robotaxi Rides Begin, We Still Don't Know the Mystery of Tesla's Human Helpers
Neither the US federal government nor the City of Austin will say how teleoperations, self-driving's critical safety feature, will be used in the service launching in Austin in just a matter of days. Photograph: Sjoerd vanSelf-driving vehicle developers don't usually love talking about 'teleoperation'—when a human guides or drives robot cars remotely. It can feel like a dirty secret. Shouldn't an autonomous vehicle operate, well, autonomously ? But experts say teleoperations are, at least right now, a critical part of any robot taxi service, including Tesla's Robotaxi. The tech, though impressive, is still in development, and the autonomous systems still need humans to guide them through less-common and especially sticky road situations. Plus, a bedrock principle of safety engineering is that every system needs a backup—doubly so for new robotic ones that involve two-ton EVs driving themselves on public roads. And yet, just days out from Tesla's launch of its long-awaited (and much delayed) Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, the public still doesn't know much at all about its teleoperations systems. Tesla has posted a job related to teleoperations where it states the role will be responsible for developing the application "that our Remote Operators use to interface with our cars and robots', an application where these operators will be 'transported into the device's world using a state-of-the-art VR rig that allows them to remotely perform complex and intricate tasks.' Alarmingly, several government spokespeople—representing the city of Austin, the state of Texas, and the US' top road safety regulator—didn't respond to questions about Tesla's teleoperations. Indeed, Austin and the Texas Department of Transportation referred all our questions about Tesla technology to the company itself. Tesla, which disbanded its public relations team in 2020, didn't respond to WIRED's questions. Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the country's road safety watchdog, wrote a letter to Tesla posing questions about, among other things, how or if Tesla planned to use teleoperations. How will its human staff be expected to monitor, supervise, or even intervene when its systems are on the road? The government asked the company to respond by June 19, which will be after the service supposedly launches on June 12, according to reporting from Bloomberg earlier this month. NHTSA repeatedly would not respond to WIRED's inquiries into what it knows about Tesla's teleoperations. The Los Angeles Times reported that humans used teleoperations to manipulate the robot Optimus during a 'Cybercab' debut event in Los Angeles, and when Optimus showed off its new hands a month later, catching a tennis ball in mid-air, an engineer for the company acknowledged that humans similarly used teleoperations. The company also has a permit to test autonomous vehicles in California with a driver behind the wheel. The state has much stricter rules than Texas, and requires some kind of 'communication link' between testing vehicles and remote operators, so it's likely the company has some kind of system. While not shedding any light on exactly how Tesla's teleoperations will work in the city, Austin Transportation and Public Works spokesperson Cristal Corrales wrote in an email: 'The City works with AV [autonomous vehicle] companies before and during deployment to obtain training for first responders, establish expectations for ongoing communication and share information about infrastructure and events.' Texas Department of Transportation spokesperson Laura Butterbrodt said in an emailed statement: 'Texas law allows for AV testing and operations on Texas roadways as long as they meet the same safety and insurance requirements as every other vehicle on the road.' Bedeviling this Robotaxi mystery is the fact that the autonomous vehicle industry hasn't coalesced around a definition for 'teleoperations.' So as Tesla watchers await the Austin service, it's worth understanding a bit more about these 'teleoperations,' and how they work. The interior of Tesla's autonomous Cybercab taxi, showing the complete lack of physical controls—no steering wheel or pedals. Photograph:A Little Help From My Friends It's worth defining some terms. What self-driving car developers usually call 'remote operations' refer to a few different sorts of human jobs. There are, first, the operators who deal with other humans. These are people trained to interact with autonomous taxi riders when they have questions or need assistance in an emergency. Alphabet's Waymo, the undisputed leader in self-driving, has a big 'Support' button on its in-car passenger screens, which can connect riders with these folks. These operators can also be people trained to interact with law enforcement or emergency responders when they need assistance. Then there are operators who deal with the autonomous system. Some of these people may work in 'remote assistance.' More confusion: Self-driving car developers give these tasks different names and titles. Amazon subsidiary Zoox uses 'teleguidance'; the self-driving truck developers at Aurora like 'teleassistance'; Tesla appears to stick to 'teleoperation'; Waymo calls these workers 'fleet response agents.' Whatever they're called, these humans are meant to guide the autonomous system when it needs help. A car might alert people, for example, when it has encountered a road block, like construction equipment; the remote assistant might suggest a lane change, or a turn, or even a quick dip onto a road's shoulder to get around it. These human assistants can also sometimes reroute an autonomous vehicle if its planned itinerary no longer makes sense—maybe a road is unexpectedly closed off for a street fair. They can also sometimes help the car identify objects that have, for whatever reason, confused its sensors: a plastic bag flapping in the wind, or a traffic light (red or green?). Remote assistance should be a part of every safe self-driving vehicle program, says Philip Koopman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies autonomous vehicle safety. 'The technology is not there for them to be able to handle everything, and that's OK,' he says. Having humans operate in the background of autonomous systems, then, isn't 'cheating' at self-driving. It's understanding the limits of today's technology—and what it takes to run a profitable business based on self-driving cars. Still, some remote assistance programs are safer than others, Koopman says. Some of that comes down to 'triggers,' or how the system knows it needs help, and turns to its human overlords. Is it the human assistant's job to notice that the vehicle is stuck—or about to smash into something? Or is the onus on the vehicle to ask for aid? The safer bet, he says, is to train the technology to know when it needs intervention, rather than relying on the vigilance of the human auxiliaries. Asking for help can be very hard for people—but it might be harder for robots. That's because autonomous systems must automatically provide the humans with everything they need to know to assist: what happened; where the vehicle is in space; and if there's anything around it. Only then can the humans guide the robots. A Tesla Cybercab prototype at a Tesla store in San Jose, California, in November 2024. Photograph: DavidHumans in the Loop If that sounds tough, even tougher—and more controversial—is 'remote driving.' This is what most people probably think of when they hear 'teleoperations': Someone far away from the supposed self-driving car, behind their own steering wheel or joystick, piloting it like a long-distance RC car. Remote driving has even more technical challenges. Ben Shukman should know—as an engineer at a startup called Phantom Auto that focused on remote driving, he believes he was the first to do it on public roads. The first issue is connectivity. 'Your ability to drive a car without being in the car is only as stable as the internet connection that connects you to it,' he says. But anyone who has called a friend on a long drive knows that networks drop in and out as you move in space. There are technical ways to knit together networks, but those aren't foolproof. This leads to big issues with latency. So imagine the worst case scenario: A robot car needs help navigating around an accident on a highway, a remote driver gets it moving, and then … the connection dies. Another challenge in remote driving: Helping drivers understand the experience of driving without actually being in the car. It's hard to understand how quickly the momentum is shifting, or how hard you're braking if you're not inside the car. Shukman says it's possible to build a user interface that gives remote drivers a sense of what it's like on the road, but this takes thought and time. For these reasons, Shukman says, remote driving is less than safe in environments where vehicles are moving quickly in unpredictable environments, even above a handful of miles per hour. Today, the technique is mostly used in public to get delivery robots out of jams. Those move so slowly that a few milliseconds of dropped connection likely won't spell disaster. The startup where he worked, Phantom Auto, eventually pivoted to operating forklifts remotely in warehouse settings. (It shut down last year, but its founders are sticking with its thesis: Their new startup keeps humans 'in the loop' by building a platform that allows people to easily intervene to help in AI search.) The Tesla Question If Tesla does make good on its promise to start its Robotaxi service in Austin this month, how will it handle teleoperations? A Morgan Stanley research note from its head of global autos and shared mobility research Adam Jonas claims the service will be heavily teleoperated, though Tesla has not confirmed any of this. The job posting for software engineers working in teleoperation on 'Optimus & Robotaxi' explicitly says the company's remote operators will be 'transported into the device's world using a state-of-the-art VR rig' that will supposedly let them remotely execute intricate tasks requiring some form of human involvement. This sounds more like remote driving— direct intervention with the driving task—than remote assistance. If Tesla's remote operators are meant to closely monitor its Robotaxis' systems, 'I think it's going to be very difficult to expand beyond a few vehicles and a small area,' says Koopman, the professor. Or at least, to do it safely. In fact, that's what CEO Elon Musk has said—that Tesla's Robotaxi launch will start with just 10 to 20 cars, and expand from there. Maybe there will be some robots. But the better questions are what the humans supporting them will be doing—and whether they'll be doing it safely.


Fast Company
8 hours ago
- Fast Company
How Austin became the robotaxi capital of America
The robotaxi race is heating up in Austin. A decade after Google's self-driving car project quietly tested on the city's streets, a new wave of autonomous vehicle companies is setting up shop. Waymo, now a dominant force in San Francisco, is expanding to the city. Tesla is preparing to debut its long-promised robotaxi. And smaller players like Zoox, Avride, and ADMT are using the Texas capital as a proving ground. What was once a fringe experiment is now a high-stakes industry comeback, deep in the heart of Texas. 'You have a regulatory environment that's keen to capitalize on these developments,' says Alison Brooks, research vice president for worldwide public safety at IDC. 'At the same time, it's a blue city in a red state that's predisposed towards alternative vehicles that are more environmentally friendly.' The self-driving companies converging on Austin The only fully deployed and operational robotaxi company in Austin is Waymo. In 2023, the company announced it was expanding testing to 'the city that keeps it weird,' more than two years after its Phoenix launch. Since its March launch, Waymo now has about 100 robotaxis in Austin, making up 20% of local Uber trips. 'By expanding our partnership with Uber to Austin, we were able to bring Waymo rides to residents and visitors in Austin even faster,' a representative for Waymo tells Fast Company.