Austin Board of Realtors Announces Plans for New Headquarters

The Austin Board of Realtors (ABOR) has announced plans to construct a brand new headquarters. The building, which is tentatively planned to measure somewhere between 30,000 and 33,000 square feet, will be located in Northwest Austin in an area overlooking the Great Hills neighborhood.

Cathy Coneway, who is the Chairman of the Austin Board of Realtors, estimates the construction cost of the new building will be between $11 million and $13 million. Coneway has not disclosed the sales price of the 5.2 acres of land upon which the building will be built. Although ABOR has been purchasing several parcels of hillside land over the past several months in preparation for the new building, it did not notify its members about the pending move until after the plans were approved by Austin's Environmental Board and the Zoning & Platting Commission on September 3.

The address of the new headquarters will be 4800 Spicewood Springs Road. This location will be a more centralized location for ABOR members than the current location at 10900 Stonelake Boulevard, which is near to U.S. Highway 183 and Braker Lane. Prior to this location, the organization owned a building on Medical Parkway. The organization moved to its current location after running out of space at the Medical Parkway location nine years ago.

After making a move to the current location, Coneway says the organization received a great deal of negative feedback from members who were unhappy with the fact that ABOR was renting its space after having owned the previous property. Many members felt that having a lease arrangement was contradictory of the Realtor's mission of promoting property ownership.

Plans for the new location started taking shape about nine months ago. At this time, ABOR decided to once again move toward owning its property rather than leasing. Since the organization had invested the money it received from the sale of the Medical Parkway building, it had a sizeable amount of money to invest in a new property.

The new building, which is being designed by STG Design in Austin and constructed by White Construction Co., will feature three auditoriums. It will also boast several conference rooms, a dedicated closing room, a computer lab, a coffee bar, a cafe, a member lounge with an outdoor terrace and a green room where the organization can create instructional videos. The building will also have virtual classroom technology, which can be used for connecting with long-distance events as well as for training purposes. Plans also call becoming green certified and using reclaimed lumber from the old Spaghetti Warehouse for the reception area.

The formal groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled to take place on September 12. ABOR expects to be able to move into the new building in December of next year.