Built With the Neighborhood
Arrive Hotel
For years, the southwest corner of East 6th and Chicon didn’t have much going for it – an uninspiring office building from the early 2000s and a dilapidated warehouse.
But what may have seemed an unlikely canvas for a new hotel provided the ideal foundation for ARRIVE East Austin, the 83-room hotel now being constructed on the site. The project’s adaptive reuse of the warehouse is just one example of ARRIVE’s goal to honor and integrate with the neighborhood. Burton Baldridge (Burton Baldridge Architects), the architect of the project, says, “we drew largely from the materials already present in the neighborhood like steel framed windows, concrete and masonry. While it is a large structure, we wanted the hotel to be more of an extension of the pre-existing East Austin aesthetic, paying particular attention to the sense of pedestrian scale that really defines the area.”
Baldridge has been working as an architect in Austin since 2002 and has adeptly navigated a variety of neighborhoods within the city, designing homes and commercial spaces, including the Kimber Modern in South Congress. With his experience in creating structures with a focus on the needs of individuals and communities, he says it was only a natural extension that he work with ARRIVE to conceptualize a hotel that is a community space first and a hotel second.
The entrance of the hotel is specifically designed to welcome in the neighborhood. Forgoing a traditional lobby, the front doors of the hotel open into two restaurant and bar spaces where you can kick back, grab a drink and mingle with the locals. As Baldridge explains, “you show up basically at a bar, they take your bags, hand you a drink, and you are there. It’s kind of a cool deal.” Baldridge also reveals that ARRIVE purposefully invested in quality materials to ensure the longevity of this culturally concepted structure. He underscored that the idea was to create a cohesive design that integrated with the character of East Austin.
Slated to open in early 2019, the construction team recently laid the last support beam into the framework of the hotel and celebrated at a top-off event where they honored those who worked to weld, pour, and erect the structure. ARRIVE is proud to be among the first to build under the Worker’s Defense Project’s Better Builder Program, which ensures that construction staff are paid a living wage and are protected by stringent health and safety guidelines. “As a new member of the East Austin community, it was important for us to demonstrate our commitment to workers’ rights,” says ARRIVE CEO Matt Steinberg.
The full personality of the hotel will emerge over the next eight months as its neighborhood-focused design and functional features fully take shape within the just-completed frame. According to Baldridge, “It’s difficult to look at a large building and say that there’s a community ethos there, but there really is.”
Working Together
Arrive Hotels works closely with the Worker’s Defense Project, an organization that was founded in 2002 by employees and volunteers of Casa Marianella, a local Austin shelter. Together they address the problem of unpaid wages for Austin’s low-wage workers through education and strategic partnerships.
Contact:
1813 E 6th Street
arriveenterprises.com
@arriveeastaustin
