New Residential Complex
70 Rainey is a 35-story luxury residential complex located in the heart of the Rainey Street Historic District offering condominiums ranging from studios to three bedroom to three-story penthouses. 70 Rainey consists of nine levels of parking, two levels of amenity space, 22 levels of residential space, and two levels of mechanical support space at the top of the tower.
The facade system for 70 Rainey includes a glass curtain wall in the residential units, and an urban cladding system for the parking garage podium that will allow greenery to grow on it over time. Each of the 164 condominium units offers panoramic views of the Colorado River, the Austin skyline, and the Hill Country. To achieve this dramatic view the tower rotates 14 degrees starting at the amenity plaza located on Level 10, situated 110 feet above the ground surface.
IMEG structural engineers were challenged to create a solution for how to align the two different programming spaces of the building, which consist of a residential tower sitting on top of a parking garage structure, without the creation of a transfer level. To accomplish this, IMEG worked diligently with the architect to position columns in the residential space at key locations that would allow them to slope between Level 12 and Level 10 back to a functional grid system for the parking garage below. As a result of this creative design, only three of the 21 columns that support the residential tower required transfer girders. This yielded significant economic savings to the structural portion of the project.
Other structural aspects include laterally bracing shear wall cores and, for a majority of the building, a two-way post-tension flat plate floor design. The flat plate design allowed the ownership to yield both additional savings in structural cost, but also gain valuable real estate by being able to fit more sellable floors within the overall height of the building.
Additional features include a 30,000-sf amenity plaza that is located on the 10th and 11th floors. The amenity plaza contains two swimming pools, a fitness center, a dog park, and over 20,000-sf of outdoor amenity space, as well as views of Lady Bird Lake and the Downtown Austin Skyline. There is 9,000-sf of restaurant/retail shell space on the ground floor and second floor of the building. The building received an Austin Energy Four-Star Rating.
