Austin unveils $1.26 billion plan to rebuild convention center, aims for net‑zero carbon and 2029 reopening

Katie Smesnick, assistant director of the Austin Convention Center, and Riley Triggs, a project manager with the City of Austin Capital Delivery Services Department, presented detailed designs and a construction schedule for the Austin Convention Center redevelopment at the Austin Downtown Commission meeting on March 19.

The project carries a current construction estimate of $1,260,000,000 and will be funded through the convention center’s allocation of hotel-occupancy tax and convention-center revenues. "I am Katie Smesnick. I'm actually assistant director with the Austin Convention Center, and I'm joined, by Riley Triggs," Smesnick told commissioners as Triggs led the design presentation.

The redevelopment would expand the center’s rentable interior area from the existing 365,000 square feet to about 550,000 square feet, and add roughly 70,000 square feet of outdoor rentable space — for a total of about 620,000 square feet of rentable space. Project leaders said the design intentionally reserves structural capacity for a future expansion above utilitarian spaces. Triggs described the overall concept as a stronger civic connector that pulls Waller Creek and the Waterloo Conservancy landscape into the site and reopens Second Street for pedestrian activity while maintaining Third Street as a multimodal entrance.

Why it matters: City staff said the current center routinely turns away about half of business leads and that the expansion would…