William P. Hobby State Office Building

William P. Hobby State Office Building
William P. Hobby State Office Building
General information
Type	Government
Location	333 Guadalupe Street, Austin, Texas, United States
Construction started	1983
Completed	1986
Cost	US$54 million
Owner	Government of Texas
Height
Roof	177 ft (54 m)
Technical details
Floor count	13; 9; 5
Floor area	378,000 sq ft (35,100 m2)
Design and construction
Architect	Rosetti Architects; Holt-Fatter-Scott; WZMH Architects
Developer	Watson-Casey Companies

Last updated August 06, 2019

The William P. Hobby State Office Building - formerly known as Republic Plaza - is a three-building government office complex located in the Warehouse District of Downtown Austin, Texas. The building complex houses numerous Texas Texas state agencies, including the Texas Department of Insurance, Texas Medical Board, Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists and the Texas State Board of Dental Examiners. The complex is named for former Lieutenant Governor, William P. Hobby Jr.

Downtown Austin is the central business district of Austin, Texas. Downtown is located on the north bank of the Colorado River. The approximate borders of Downtown include Lamar Boulevard to the west, Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and the University of Texas at Austin to the north, Interstate 35 to the east, and Lady Bird Lake to the south.

Austin is the capital of the U.S. state of Texas and the seat of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. It is the 11th-most populous city in the United States and the 4th-most populous city in Texas. It is also the fastest growing large city in the United States, the second most populous state capital after Phoenix, Arizona, and the southernmost state capital in the contiguous United States. As of the U.S. Census Bureau's July 1, 2018 estimate, Austin had a population of 964,254 up from 790,491 at the 2010 census. The city is the cultural and economic center of the Austin–Round Rock metropolitan statistical area, which had an estimated population of 2,168,316 as of July 1, 2018. Located in Central Texas within the greater Texas Hill Country, it is home to numerous lakes, rivers, and waterways, including Lady Bird Lake and Lake Travis on the Colorado River, Barton Springs, McKinney Falls, and Lake Walter E. Long.

Texas is the second largest state in the United States by both area and population. Geographically located in the South Central region of the country, Texas shares borders with the U.S. states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the southwest, and has a coastline with the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast.

Architecture

The complex contains three distinct postmodern towers. Tower one, designed by the Dallas-based Rossetti Associates, is clad in a bronze-tinted glass curtain wall with red mullion stripes; Tower two, designed by architecture firm Holt-Fatter-Scott, is a pueblo revival style building with a stucco facade; and Tower three, designed by WZMH Architects, is designed with concrete wall panels.^[1] The complex features an outdoor plaza which originally featured a large water feature consisting of a large pool covered by a red pipe trellis that sprayed water downward into the pool. After years of mechanical failures, the water feature was removed and the plaza was renovated in 2018; the pools were filled in with styrofoam blocks and covered with benches and planters, while the trellis' water system was repurposed to provide irrigation for the planters.^[2]

Postmodern architecture is a style or movement which emerged in the 1960s as a reaction against the austerity, formality, and lack of variety of modern architecture, particularly in the international style advocated by Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The movement was introduced by the architect and urban planner Denise Scott Brown and architectural theorist Robert Venturi in their book Learning from Las Vegas. The style flourished from the 1980s through the 1990s, particularly in the work of Scott Brown & Venturi, Philip Johnson, Charles Moore and Michael Graves. In the late 1990s it divided into a multitude of new tendencies, including high-tech architecture, modern classicism and deconstructivism.

A curtain wall system is an outer covering of a building in which the outer walls are non-structural, utilized only to keep the weather out and the occupants in. Since the curtain wall is non-structural, it can be made of lightweight materials, thereby reducing construction costs. When glass is used as the curtain wall, an advantage is that natural light can penetrate deeper within the building. The curtain wall façade does not carry any structural load from the building other than its own dead load weight. The wall transfers lateral wind loads that are incident upon it to the main building structure through connections at floors or columns of the building. A curtain wall is designed to resist air and water infiltration, absorb sway induced by wind and seismic forces acting on the building, withstand wind loads, and support its own dead load weight forces.

Mullion slender, vertical, usually nonstructural bar or pier forming a division between doors, screens, or lights of windows

A mullion is a vertical element that forms a division between units of a window or screen, or is used decoratively. When dividing adjacent window units its primary purpose is a rigid support to the glazing of the window. Its secondary purpose is to provide structural support to an arch or lintel above the window opening. Horizontal elements separating the head of a door from a window above are both a head jamb and horizontal mullion and are called "transoms".

History

Looking from the corner of W 3rd Street and Guadalupe Street HobbyStateOfficeBldg-2007-11.JPG — Looking from the corner of W 3rd Street and Guadalupe Street

The complex, originally named Republic Plaza, was developed by Austin developers Watson-Casey Companies, originally envisioned as the first phase of a 60-acre urban renewal project for Austin's Warehouse District.^[1] The unbuilt redevelopment's master plan, designed by urban planner Denise Scott Brown, would have included a new city hall for the city of Austin and a new location for the Laguna Gloria art museum, designed by architect Robert Venturi.^[3]

Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment often used to address urban decay in cities. Urban renewal is the clearing out of blighted areas in inner cities to clear out slums and create opportunities for higher class housing, businesses, and more.

Denise Scott Brown is an American architect, planner, writer, educator, and principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates in Philadelphia. Scott Brown and her husband and partner, Robert Venturi, are regarded as among the most influential architects of the twentieth century, both through their architecture and planning, and theoretical writing and teaching.

The Contemporary Austin - Laguna Gloria, formerly known as the AMOA-Arthouse at Laguna Gloria, is the former home of Clara Driscoll and site of a 1916 Italianate-style villa on the shores of Lake Austin in Austin, Texas. It was the original home of the Austin Museum of Art and still houses some of its collections. The building is now one of two sites of The Contemporary Austin.

The complex was originally built for private offices with ground-floor retail but had trouble attracting leases following the late-1980s Savings and Loan Crisis. In 1987, the First Republic Bank Corporation foreclosed on the complex.^[4] The developers, Watson-Casey had sought to attract the City of Austin to lease the building, first for the Electric Department, then for the Water and Wastewater Department, and later for a lease purchase contract to use the complex as a temporary city hall, all of which fell through.^[4] In 1990, the complex was purchased by the State of Texas and was renamed the William P. Hobby Building.^[5]

First Republic Bank Corporation was an American bank based in Texas. Founded as the Guaranty Bank and Trust Company in 1920, in 1922 it assumed the name Republic National Bank of Dallas. Afterwards the bank acquired several banks and invested in others, and changed its name several times. By 1948 Republic had grown to become the largest bank in Texas. The bank failed in 1988, during the savings and loan crisis. In 1988 NCNB Corporation acquired First RepublicBank and in 1991 changed its name to NationsBank.

A Lease-Purchase Contract, also known as a Lease Purchase Agreement, is the heart of rent-to-own properties. It combines elements of a traditional rental agreement with an exclusive right of first refusal option for later purchase on the home. It is a shortened name for Lease with Option to Purchase Contract.

In 2019, it was revealed that the complex was in need of up to $50 million in repairs and contained a rat infestation.^[6] The Texas Facilities Commission spent over $14 million since 2008 on repairs including new fire alarms, electrical systems, a new emergency generator, renovated elevators, and a new HVAC system.^[7] Texas State Senator Kirk Watson and Representative Gina Hinojosa proposed a bill to allow the complex to be auctioned off.^[6]

The Texas Facilities Commission is a Texas state agency.

Kirk Preston Watson is an American attorney and Democratic politician from the capital city of Austin, Texas. He served as Austin mayor from 1997 to 2001. He ran unsuccessfully for Texas Attorney General in the 2002 election, when he was defeated by the Republican Greg Abbott, later governor of Texas. In 2006, Watson was elected to the Texas State Senate from District 14.

Gina Hinojosa is an American lawyer and politician. She is a Democratic member of the Texas House of Representatives, representing the 49th District. Hinojosa was sworn into the Texas House on January 10, 2017, after winning the November 2016 general election. She succeeded Democrat Elliott Naishtat, who did not run for re-election.

Reception

Upon the completion of the complex, Austin American-Statesman architecture critic Michael McCullar criticized the buildings' mismatched designs, saying that "bringing in three separate architecture firms to produce three separate "identities" for the complex may have diluted its architectural impact", and comparing the outdoor water feature to a "punctured radiator".^[1] During a Texas Senate Finance Committee meeting in 2019, Senator Kirk Watson said that the complex “is an embarrassment (and) it’s a joke — in any other universe it wouldn’t exist.”^[6]

The Austin American-Statesman is the major daily newspaper for Austin, the capital city of Texas. It is owned by GateHouse Media.

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References

1 2 3 McCullar, Michael (June 7, 1986). "3 buildings, 3 designers, and 1 project". Austin American-Statesman. Retrieved May 18, 2019.
↑ "William P. Hobby Plaza". GSC Architects. October 18, 2018. Retrieved May 18, 2019.
↑ Tyson, Kim (April 19, 1984). "Redevelopment proposal for warehouse district". Austin American-Statesman. Retrieved May 18, 2019.
1 2 Tyson, Kim (October 13, 1987). "Republic Plaza foreclosure posted". Austin American-Statesman. Retrieved May 18, 2019.
↑ Tyson, Kim (March 30, 1992). "State becoming force in city office market". Austin American-Statesman. Retrieved May 18, 2019.
1 2 3 Sechler, Bob (March 28, 2019). "Sale plan could make 'terrible' Hobby state office building a hot property". Austin American-Statesman. Retrieved May 18, 2019.
↑ Marfin, Catherine (April 29, 2019). ""Be aware, there's rats": Workers in a state office building describe a constant pest infestation". Texas Tribune. Retrieved May 18, 2019.

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[McCullar-1] 1 2 3 McCullar, Michael (June 7, 1986). "3 buildings, 3 designers, and 1 project". Austin American-Statesman. Retrieved May 18, 2019.

[2] "William P. Hobby Plaza". GSC Architects. October 18, 2018. Retrieved May 18, 2019.

[3] Tyson, Kim (April 19, 1984). "Redevelopment proposal for warehouse district". Austin American-Statesman. Retrieved May 18, 2019.

[Foreclosure-4] 1 2 Tyson, Kim (October 13, 1987). "Republic Plaza foreclosure posted". Austin American-Statesman. Retrieved May 18, 2019.

[5] Tyson, Kim (March 30, 1992). "State becoming force in city office market". Austin American-Statesman. Retrieved May 18, 2019.

[Sechler-6] 1 2 3 Sechler, Bob (March 28, 2019). "Sale plan could make 'terrible' Hobby state office building a hot property". Austin American-Statesman. Retrieved May 18, 2019.

[7] Marfin, Catherine (April 29, 2019). ""Be aware, there's rats": Workers in a state office building describe a constant pest infestation". Texas Tribune. Retrieved May 18, 2019.