Lincoln, Kairoi’s Waterline Is Now Texas’ Tallest Tower

Lincoln Property Co. and Kairoi Residential have completed Texas’ tallest tower in downtown Austin, according to Multi-Housing News. Waterline rises 74 stories and 1,025 feet, edging out Houston’s JPMorgan Chase Tower by 23 feet for the state’s top spot. The $742.5 million mixed-use project stacks apartments, office space, and a hotel into a single supertall building, and the development team delivered it two months ahead of schedule despite the complexity of combining three distinct property types in one structure.

Two-Time Champion

This is Lincoln and Kairoi’s second record-setting tower in Austin. The same partnership previously delivered Sixth & Guadalupe, a 66-story building that had ranked as the city’s second-tallest structure until Waterline topped out 185 feet above it. General contractor DPR Construction led the build, with KPF as designer, HKS as architect of record, Brockette Davis Drake as structural engineer, and Alvine & Associates handling MEPF systems. The team’s track record on Sixth & Guadalupe likely helped smooth the path for an even more ambitious follow-up, giving Lincoln and Kairoi ownership of Austin’s tallest and formerly second-tallest towers alike.

The Details

Waterline sits on more than 3 acres at 98 Red River St., next to the Waterloo Greenway Confluence park that opened earlier this summer. The residential portion, branded Bosque Residences, spans 352 units across 33 floors, with layouts from 701 to 2,803 square feet, including penthouses with waterfall kitchen islands and freestanding tubs. Office space totals 703,000 square feet across 24 floors, and a 252-key hotel occupies the top 13 stories. Shared amenities include a coworking lounge, conference rooms, a podcast studio, a golf simulator, and several swimming pools, an amenity mix aimed at both residents and the office tenants and hotel guests sharing the building. The project carries a $742.5 million self-financed construction loan originated in June 2022, a year before construction began, according to Yardi Matrix, with the debt due in June 2027.

Zooming Out

Waterline arrives as Austin works through the tail end of a historic apartment supply wave. Citywide multifamily inventory grew 5.4% on a trailing 12-month basis through July, while apartment rents remained 3.7% below year-ago levels, according to Yardi Matrix. But the market is beginning to rebalance as new construction slows sharply and absorption strengthens. Waterline joins several recently delivered downtown towers, including the 414-unit The Travis and 550-unit Paseo, that will test how quickly Austin can absorb the final stages of its recent development boom.

Why It Matters

Waterline is also a proof point for Austin’s land-use overhaul. Two major zoning changes reduced or eliminated parking mandates and rezoned commercial and underbuilt land for taller multifamily development, according to Alex Horowitz of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ housing policy initiative. Those changes helped make apartments the city’s predominant housing type as of 2024, per a Pew report. For developers, Waterline demonstrates that Austin’s regulatory shift can support capital-intensive, mixed-use towers even as the multifamily market works through the effects of its recent supply wave. With construction starts falling and absorption strengthening, the tower is opening as Austin’s apartment fundamentals appear to be moving toward a healthier balance.

What’s Next

With Waterline complete, Austin’s skyline race isn’t over. Expect continued competition for scale as developers chase similarly ambitious mixed-use projects elsewhere in Texas, including Fort Worth’s $1.7 billion Trinity River development. Watch whether Waterline’s office and hotel components lease up as quickly as its apartments, given how thin office demand has been across the broader Austin market, and whether the tower’s height record holds as other Texas cities pursue their own supertall proposals.