Austin now has the tallest building in Texas

AUSTIN, Texas – Austin is now home to the tallest building in Texas.

By the numbers:

The Waterline Tower at 98 Red River Street is 74 stories and 1,025 feet. 

It’s 23 feet taller than the Chase Tower in Houston, which had been the tallest building in Texas since 1981. 

The tower sits along Waller Creek. There’s a hotel on the bottom, office space in the middle, and residences on top. Everyone has their own entrances and amenities.

• 352 luxury apartment homes
• 700,000 square feet of office space
• A 251-room hotel
• 24,000 square feet of publicly accessible retail and restaurant space overlooking Waller Creek and Waterloo Greenway

On a tour, the developers showed views from the 15th, 39th, and 72nd floors. They also showed a model of what a hotel room would look like.

Take a tour of the building with FOX 7 Austin’s Angela Shen below and here.

What they’re saying:

Andy Smith, senior vice president of Lincoln Property Company, says they didn’t plan for it to be the tallest building in Texas. 

“It just kind of grew into that,” he said. “Supply and demand drives our decisions. As we looked at the needs for Austin and for downtown, hotel need, residential need, office need, and it all came together.”

If you’re tired of construction in the area, Smith says, “it’s almost done, and we actually will be the last project roughly in Rainey for quite a while.”

When asked about Rainey Street and changes to “old Austin,” he says, “we’ve tried to keep Rainey, you know, with the with the restaurants and bars as close as we can and continue to promote that and want that. It’s all part of the Austin fabric and we certainly don’t want to mess with that.”

What’s next:

The hotel will open first. Lincoln is marketing the office floors, and Kairoi Residential will soon start marketing the residential floors. 

The entire tower is expected to be open in the fall of 2026.