A sleepy pocket of South Austin where Ben White Boulevard meets Banister Lane may not stay quiet much longer. A plan is moving forward to tear down four aging low-rise office buildings and replace them with a mixed-use project that would combine ground-floor shops and restaurants, modern office space, and more than 200 apartments. The roughly 4.4-acre site would turn an underused office campus into denser housing and street-level retail close to transit, in step with a broader trend of reworking older office properties as demand shifts.
Rezoning clears the way
According to a City of Austin staff report, the 4.396-acre tract has been rezoned to GR-MU-V-DB90, a mixed-use district that taps the DB90 density bonus. That program allows buildings up to 90 feet tall in exchange for an affordable-housing component. The staff packet notes that a DB90 project on this site could support more than 200 residential units, with the usual format of retail, restaurants, and offices at street level and housing stacked above. It also lays out the various DB90 affordability options that developers can use in return for extra height and modified site standards.
What sits there now
For now, the property is still an office complex known as Park Place. Multiple commercial listings show the addresses at 4005 and 4009 Banister Lane as mid-1980s office buildings that are still being leased, according to a LoopNet listing. The low-rise buildings, surface parking lots and small-suite layout are the kind of features that often push owners to weigh a retrofit against a complete teardown. Brokers are still marketing available suites even as the owner and its agent work on a much larger rethink of the block.
Approvals and next moves
The rezoning case, listed as C14-2024-0042, worked its way through the city process and won City Council approval on all three readings in August 2024, which removed a major regulatory hurdle, according to City Council action notes. Records list OP Park Place Property LLC as the owner and applicant, with Drenner Group serving as the agent. The development team is now advancing into the next phase of design and permitting, as reported by the Austin Business Journal.
Why developers are eyeing old office parks
A City of Austin audit of office conversions found that the local office vacancy rate was 16.8% as of December 2023 and noted that older, lower-quality buildings are under particular pressure. In many cases, owners are deciding that demolition and full redevelopment make more sense than trying to rework outdated floor plates. The same audit also flagged significant structural and cost hurdles for conversion projects, which helps explain why density bonuses and affordability tradeoffs such as DB90 have become central features of many new proposals.
Neighborhood impact and timeline
Next steps for the Ben White and Banister Lane project include site-plan filings, engineering and utility reviews, and standard community-notice periods before any demolition or construction can begin. If the team secures financing and clears those approvals, the block could gradually shift over the coming years into a denser mixed-use hub that brings new residents along with street-level retail and services.
