Northeast Austin’s EastVillage Mixed-Use Project Taking Shape

Six buildings are complete and a number of leases have been signed in one of Northeast Austin’s largest mixed-use projects — and there’s a lot more to come.

EastVillage, a 425-acre development along Parmer Lane not far from Samsung’s longtime Austin plant, still has seven to 10 years of work left, said Gordon Reger, chairman and CEO of New York-based developer Reger Holdings.

At full buildout, it will have 500,000 square feet of retail, restaurant and entertainment spaces, 1.5 million square feet of office space suitable for life sciences uses, 2,400 multifamily units, 466 single-family homes, three hotels with 420 rooms and a 150-acre nature preserve. GW Partners President Brett Carr, who has been tapped to handle retail leasing efforts, said EastVillage is expected to have 10,000 people living in it eventually.

For now, six buildings concentrated around Inovar Circle have been completed, and a number of retail, hotel and office leases have been signed.

Among them, life sciences company BillionToOne has signed a 220,000-square-foot lease for office space in the development — a project announced this month. Hilton Hotels & Resorts has signed three hotel leases, and Bowling 810, Swish Dental, Refuel, Spoon & Fork Thai, and Medspa 810 have all signed leases as well.

Around 1.3 million square feet of office space remains that’s suitable for both life science users and traditional office tenants, Reger said. The brokerage handling office leasing is ECR.

While the office space wasn’t originally planned to be tailored for life science users, Reger said the change was made because of market conditions.

“Office wasn’t going to work anymore, after the last year or two,” he said. “We decided to shift our strategy. Fortunately, it didn’t take us very long to come up with a requirement that we were able to meet, so that pretty much sealed the deal to switch from office to life science. But, it could be either office or life science, the way it’s designed.”

The Vaughan — a 312-unit apartment complex, according to an EastVillage site plan — is 90% leased, and construction of the Janis, a 422-unit complex, is expected to open soon. Greystar is managing the multifamily properties, Reger said.

The multifamily projects are named after Stevie Ray Vaughan and Janis Joplin, Reger said. The names are part of the development’s music theme, exemplified by a concert stage at the “town center” that is planned to have live music multiple nights per week.

“We’re very focused on entertainment,” Reger said, noting that the area where the development is going lacks nearby food and bar options.

The number of completed single-family homes wasn’t available, but Reger estimated that 90% of single-family lots in EastVillage’s subdivision are either occupied or under construction. KB Home is the homebuilder.

While many North Austin projects announced in recent months are byproducts of the wave of economic development that has taken place in places like Williamson County — fueled by projects such as Samsung’s sprawling factory in Taylor — Reger said he identified the EastVillage location for development way back in 2017.

Reger said he spoke to around five national homebuilders at the time, with several pointing to Northeast Austin as the area they were looking to build homes. With that knowledge, Reger said he selected the spot for development because homebuilders are “typically pretty good at reading trends.”