Construction is underway on the Texas Department of Transportation’s new $300 million headquarters in southeast Austin.
The facility, which is expected to be completed in February 2022, will be home to about 2,000 agency employees.
Eventually, it will consolidate TxDOT’s presence in Austin. The agency’s workers are currently spread over three sites across the city.
Those sites are buildings that the agency rents off of East Riverside Drive and offices the agency owns at Camp Hubbard near 35th Street and MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1).
The site of TxDOT’s new headquarters is a 49-acre tract along East Stassney Lane just south of the intersection with Burleson Road. The transportation agency paid $8.9 million for the property in 2017. It is now appraised at $9.6 million, according to the Travis Central Appraisal District.
TxDOT’s plans call for five structures on the site.
The main office is a five-story office building with about 425,000 square feet. There will also be a parking structure capable of holding about 1,580 vehicles, as well as a 74,000-square-foot materials lab where TxDOT will test a variety of things, including road construction materials and paints and coatings used for marking lanes.
A 145,000-square-foot building will be home to a print shop for road signs. It will replace a TxDOT warehouse facility near Rutland Drive and Metric Boulevard in North Austin.
“With two of three leases at our Riverside campus expiring in 2022, we have an opportunity to consolidate five campuses spread across Austin into a unified new campus that will foster collaboration and increase operating and maintenance efficiencies, while providing a welcoming and efficient environment that enables great work and continued success,” TxDOT said in a written statement. “It will be a modern workplace that will help us recruit and retain a quality workforce.”
The third lease at the Riverside Drive campus expires in 2026.
TxDOT continues to maintain its ownership of the Camp Hubbard site, although some operations for the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles have co-located there. Eventually, that site’s ownership will transfer to the DMV.
San Antonio-based Marmon Mok Architecture designed the new campus that will house TxDOT’s headquarters. The firm has experience in building government facilities, including ongoing construction of a women’s and children’s hospital in San Antonio that is set for completion in 2022.
But the feather in Marmon Mok’s cap is likely the reconstruction of the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts in San Antonio. The chair of the Texas Transportation Commission, which oversees TxDOT, J. Bruce Bugg Jr. is the founding chair of the Tobin Center’s board.
Houston-based J.T. Vaughn Construction is handling construction at the site after securing the $298 million contract in June 2019. It is the largest state contract to date for the company, which has constructed multiple facilities for Sam Houston State University, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and the University of Texas System administration, according to the Legislative Budget Board.
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