"Walking into it looks like Grand Central Station. It's awesome," Peel, an Austin-based developer says. "It's got heavy steel structure on the inside and brick on the outside."
The plan is to put 110 to120 loft apartments in the former power plant and 178 garden apartments on the 23 acres surrounding the plant, Peel tells GlobeSt.com. The buildings will be set back from some electrical equipment still on the property, with berms and heavy landscaping buffering the units from the equipment. It also will set back 100 fee to 150 feet from its neighbor, the city's Landa Park.
Through his Larry Peel Co., he has developed such award-winning Austin projects as Neely's Canyon and Gaines Ranch and Water's Edge in Georgetown.
Peel says he's looking forward to working with the property. "There area lot of design challenges that are really exciting to work with," he says. "For instance, if we have seven floors in there we may have one floor with a 14-foot ceiling and one floor with a nine- or 10-foot ceiling. We may have heavy structural beams running through units."
The city of New Braunfels built the power plant in 1926 and the Lower Colorado River Authority bought it in the 1940s. After it was shut down, LCRA spent $12.5 million to clean out hazardous material such as lead. "They got it clean to the point that it's qualified for residential development," Peel says. "They did a lot of work on it."
Peel says the tenants could include empty-nesters, affluent couples, retirees and parents of New Braunfels or San Antonio residents. But he's not limiting it demographically. "The market on things like this always kind of gets further away than you think they will," he says. "We had a project in Georgetown and got a bunch of military people that we hadn't counted on."
A hotel project for the site fell through because "the numbers and concept just didn't work," Peel says. He's working with LCRA to get the project going. Construction could begin in the summer.
Peel says no exterior changes will be made due to the historic character of the structure. "Even the LCRA sign would stay up there," he says. The project doesn't have a name yet, but Peel doubts it will be the current one, "LCRA Arms," one that he says is being used in jest.
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