During an Austin City Council work session in late February, plans for the new Austin Convention Center were revealed. The new design, which will increase the facility’s size and capacity, is set to make Austin’s convention center more competitive, moving from the 61st-largest to the 35th-largest in the United States. The existing Convention Center will close in April, with the new venue expected to open by spring 2029 under the name “Unconventional ATX.”
JE Dunn Construction, in a joint venture with Turner Construction Company, serve as the general contractors on the project alongside architect firms LMN Architects and Page Architects.
The demolition and subsequent and rebuild of the Convention Center over the next four years will nearly double the amount of rentable space. Renovation costs are set at an estimated $1.26 billion and will be funded by revenues from the convention center and the hotel occupancy tax.
Plans call for a new “world-class” convention center, with the goal of making it the first net-zero carbon convention center globally. With that include plans to make it LEED Gold certified, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. LEED is the world’s most widely used green building rating system and serves as a framework for high-efficiency, cost-saving buildings.
Features include 550,000 square feet of indoor space and 70,000 square feet of outdoor space. The city of Austin selected 10 local artists to provide art for the new Convention Center and architects presented plans to salvage materials like structural trusses and metal panels.
Read more about the project’s presentation before Austin City Council in the news article below from the Austin Monitor.
