Drive past the corner of West Sixth and Blanco on a Wednesday afternoon and you will see what looks like any other stalled construction site: plywood hoarding, a stack of mass timber beams under tarps, a crane parked for the day. Most people who live within walking distance have learned to tune it out, filing the whole block under "someday" and rerouting toward West Lynn without much thought.
That assumption is wrong, and it has been wrong for a while. Once a month, on the first Tuesday, the same fenced corner turns into the busiest few hundred feet in Clarksville. Vendors set up on the sidewalk, a band plays, and the restaurants already operating inside the site push tables out as far as the space allows. The building everyone assumes is years from touching daily life has, in pieces, already joined it.
What's Actually Rising Behind The Boards
The project is Sixth & Blanco, a five-story development that takes up a full city block at the intersection its name comes from. It is the first Texas building designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss firm behind London's Tate Modern, and the architecture leans hard into that pedigree: mass timber structure instead of the usual concrete and steel, chosen partly for how it looks and partly for the lower embodied carbon that comes with building in wood.
The team behind it is entirely local. Larry McGuire, Tom Moorman, and Liz Lambert of MML Hospitality partnered with Austin developer Riverside Resources, the firm behind Fifth & West and 300 Colorado, to take the project from groundbreaking to construction. MML and Riverside closed a $193 million construction loan with Arvest Bank around the October 2024 groundbreaking, according to Urbanize Austin's coverage of the ceremony. The finished building is slated to include a 57-key hotel called The Blanco, ten residences on the top two floors starting around $10 million, and a private members club with its own bathhouse, a scope Tribeza detailed not long after sales launched.
Why Four Old Storefronts Never Came Down
Clarksville's status as a National Register historic district since 1976 is not just a plaque on a wall. It shaped what could happen to this block. When Riverside filed demolition permits in 2023 for a stretch of 1920s-era buildings along West Sixth, the plan still had to clear the city's Historic Landmark Commission before a single wall came down, a step reported by Austin's TOWERS. The commission's approval is why the site today reads as half construction zone, half working street rather than a cleared lot.
Here is what stayed and what didn't:
| Kept Standing | Cleared For New Construction |
|---|---|
| 1126 W. Sixth St. | 1110 W. Sixth St. (former Z Tejas site) |
| 1128 W. Sixth St. | 1112, 1114, 1116 W. Sixth St. |
| 605 Blanco St. | 1120, 1124, 1130 W. Sixth St. |
| 607 Blanco St. |
The four preserved storefronts sit closest to the actual corner of Sixth and Blanco, which is exactly where most of the businesses residents already recognize are still doing business.
The Bungalows Are Already Working
Inside those restored buildings, and a few others on the block, the tenant list reads like a shortcut through Clarksville's existing food and retail scene rather than a preview of something new: Clark's Oyster Bar, Howard's & Rosie's, Elle's Boutique, Lora Reynolds Gallery, Align Pilates, Pecan Square Café, Wally Workman Gallery, and La Embajada. Two longtime Austin names, Swedish Hill Bakery and ByGeorge, have also opened locations here, now operating under the same ownership group building the tower above them.
That last detail is easy to miss if you assume the whole corner is off limits until a ribbon cutting. Half the businesses that will eventually share an address with a members-only bathhouse and $10 million residences are already ringing up regular customers today, in bungalows that predate the tower by a century.
"The long-term vision is that this is a locally fueled high street for Austin."
That's Larry McGuire, speaking after the October 2024 groundbreaking. The claim underneath it is not that a national chain is dressing up as a corner store. It is the opposite bet: the same operator that already runs the bars, the wine room, and the bakery up and down this stretch is staking that a members club and eight-figure residences can sit on the same street without breaking what made the street work in the first place.
First Tuesday Is Already On The Calendar
The monthly First Tuesday celebrations are the clearest proof that the bet is already paying off in small ways. Outdoor vendors line the sidewalk, a band plays, and the restaurants operating on site extend their dining rooms outward for the evening, a rhythm confirmed month over month by Tribeza's coverage of the project. Unlike a grand opening you have to circle on a calendar and wait for, this is a recurring night out that anyone can walk into right now, with no membership card required.
A First Tuesday evening pairs easily with stops most Clarksville residents already treat as routine:
- Start at the Shoal Creek Trail entrance at 9th Street, a quieter stretch for a walk or a dog before the crowds build near the corner.
- If the calendar allows, swing by West Austin Neighborhood Park while its free pool is still running. The season only stretches from June through August, so this month is close to the last chance before it closes.
- Head down to Sixth and Blanco as the vendors set up and the music starts, and take whichever restaurant patio has an open table.
- Finish on West Lynn Street, where Café Medici, Cipollina, and Jeffrey's keep the evening going after the First Tuesday crowd thins out.
None of that loop requires waiting for anything. Pease District Park's Treehouse Observation Pod, the Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church a few blocks over, and the Ann and Roy Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail along Lady Bird Lake are all part of the same daily geography, alongside a construction site that turns into a party once a month.
What Changes When You Stop Waiting For The Ribbon Cutting
The easy version of this story treats Sixth & Blanco as a future event, something to watch from a distance until a grand opening date makes it official. The block itself tells a different story. A historic commission already decided which buildings would stay. A group of tenants already moved in. A monthly night out is already on the community calendar, with no waiting required.
If you live within a few blocks of Sixth and Blanco, the corner you have been driving past is not a preview. It is already part of how the neighborhood spends its evenings, one Tuesday at a time.
Work With Us
Blocks like this one change the character of a neighborhood well before a listing ever hits the market, and paying attention to that shift is part of how The Weiss Group approaches every corner of central Austin. Whether you are simply curious about what a project like Sixth & Blanco means for the streets around it, or you are starting to think about what comes next for your own home in Clarksville, we are glad to talk it through.
