Penn Field’s Building L To Expand Campus
It was originally developed in 1918 as an air base for the US Army but today, the post-World War I designs have been repurposed into a creative campus with a mix of office, restaurant and warehouse space.
AUSTIN, TX—Penn Field is a 183,855-square-foot 16-acre mixed-use property located at 3601 South Congress Ave. in the SoCo business district. The available creative office space will be expanded on the campus with the construction of a new 44,000-square-foot two-story building known as Building L, following Penn Field’s building nomenclature.
CIM Group is leading construction efforts. Completion of Building L, the 11th in the mixed-use campus, is anticipated in early 2020.
The new building will be located close to the Congress Avenue entrance and is designed to accommodate a single user or two single-floor tenants of approximately 21,000 square feet each. The new creative office space will include many of the attributes desired by today’s firms including high ceilings, outdoor patios and terraces, and large floorplates for configuration flexibility. A double-height lobby accessed from an entry court will infuse the building with natural light as will the floor-to-ceiling windows throughout.
Building L’s exterior design takes cues from the historic warehouses and industrial character of Penn Field. It was originally developed in 1918 as an air base for the US Army. The industrial buildings with post-World War I design have been transformed over time into what is today a creative campus with a mix of office, restaurant and warehouse space.
“Penn Field campus is a former World War I Air Force Base with existing warehouses and industrial buildings that have been repurposed into approximately 184,000 square feet of office and commercial space housing a variety of businesses,” Terry Wachsner, principal, real estate services, CIM Group, tells GlobeSt.com. “CIM is enhancing the campus with the construction of a modern ground-up office building, expanding the options at the campus.”
Penn Field has access to major thoroughfares including Interstate 35, Highway 71, Highway 290 and the Bergstrom International Airport, and it is near numerous residential communities.
In 2017, the newly renovated Austin-Bergstrom International Airport handled more than 189 million pounds of cargo with expectations to more than double that figure by 2020. It services 260 domestic and international departures a day with double-digit increases in traffic in recent years (2016-2017), GlobeSt.com learns.
For the past decade, CIM has been an owner and operator of real assets in Austin with properties including the Seaholm Power Plant mixed-use redevelopment, District at SoCo apartment community, Hartland Plaza office complex, Eastside Village office building and the Independent condominium tower.