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Austin, TX

Austin Issues the Building Permits for Its New Convention Center, at $812.4 million

Austin, Texas issued four building permits on Oct. 19 for the new Austin Convention Center at 500 E. 3rd St., each listing a reported value of $812.4 million, as steel starts rising on the $1.6 billion rebuild.

By Morningline Research · October 26, 2026

Austin, Texas issued the building permits for its new convention center on Oct. 19. There are four of them, one for each area of the building at 500 E. 3rd St., and each one lists a reported value of $812.4 million.

The old center is already gone. Its six downtown blocks are now a deep hole with three cranes over it, and the permits cover what goes back up.

Four permits, one building

Timeline of the permits and milestones for the new Austin Convention Center
Graphic: Morningline Research, from City of Austin building permit records and the reporting linked in this story.

The permits read almost word for word alike: "New Construction of Austin Convention Center," followed by Area 1, 2, 3 or 4. Each is marked as a public project and went through the city's expedited commercial review.

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The $812.4 million figure shows up on all four. We read that as one value for the whole building, repeated on each permit, not four separate amounts.

Permit values are estimates filed with the city, not contract amounts. Here the two don't match. The original construction contract was $1.2 billion, and in October 2025 the City Council added $450 million more, $241.5 million of it for excavation, civic infrastructure and mobility work, Community Impact reported. The permit value is lower than either total, and we couldn't find a source that says what the $812.4 million covers.

What's going up

The Austin Convention Center seen from the eighth floor of a nearby hotel, with a light-rail train passing in front
The old Austin Convention Center in March 2016, before it was torn down for the rebuild. Photo: Fredlyfish4, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).

The city calls the project UnconventionalATX. The new center grows rentable event space to 620,000 square feet from 365,000, The Bond Buyer reported.

When the plan went to the council in 2023, it called for a building of more than a million square feet, with 360,000 square feet of exhibit space, 184,000 of ballroom and flex space and 180,000 of meeting rooms, Community Impact reported at the time.

The city's reason for building was simple. The old center was too small. Katy Zamesnik, the department's deputy director, told KUT the center was "turning away nearly 50%" of the business it was offered. The new one doubles the meeting space. Dell Technologies World left Austin for Las Vegas over space, KUT reported. City staff projected the new center would add $285 million in local economic impact within five years of reopening, according to Community Impact.

A year and a half of digging

The old center closed and construction began in spring 2025. Demolition of the building, more than 30 years old, wrapped up in October 2025.

By August, the site was 93% excavated, according to the project's own progress page. When digging ends this fall, crews will have hauled out about 940,000 cubic yards of soil. The diaphragm wall around the six-block footprint is finished, foundation pours run through the rest of 2026, and vertical steel started going up in September.

The project has kept 85% of its demolition and salvage material out of the landfill so far, beating a 75% goal, the progress page says.

Paying for it

Hotel guests are footing most of the bill. The project runs mainly on hotel occupancy taxes, with no city property taxes, according to Community Impact.

In June, a Travis County court declared up to $1.35 billion in special tax revenue bonds legal and valid, The Bond Buyer reported. The council had approved them in May. The bonds are backed by hotel taxes and by state tax revenue from a project finance zone the city set up in 2024. In February, a Travis County judge ruled for the city in a lawsuit over a petition seeking a public vote on the project, KUT reported.

The total budget is usually reported at $1.6 billion. Community Impact's 2025 story put it at $1.65 billion.

Austin isn't the only Texas city building convention space. Fort Worth filed a $288.6 million permit application for its own convention center addition this month, as we reported. Nationally, public and institutional work has been holding up. Institutional construction starts rose 16.3% in September while commercial starts fell 18.4%, according to Dodge Construction Network data reported by Construction Dive.

Next up

Excavation finishes this fall and the steel keeps climbing. The center is set to open in early 2029.

See all of Austin's latest permit numbers, updated weekly.

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Sources

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More numbers: Austin, TX building permit activity, updated weekly.