Clayton Taylor of West of West and JR Gideon of Lincoln Property Company | Eastbound in Austin | Austin Design Week Live
Courtesy of West of West and Lincoln Property Company
Austin Design Week
Today we will be talking to Clayton Taylor and JR Gideon who are jointly working on the Eastbound project, a new mixed-use development in East Austin. This project is designed for open-air business ready gatherings on a large scale, and incorporates the current trend of destination mixed-use. Additionally, we will be speaking about how real estate professionals are already transforming where we work and how this has changed during the pandemic. Both of our guests have impressive professional portfolios, Clayton is the Founder and Principal at architecture firm West of West based out of Portland Oregon and JR is the Development Associate at Lincoln Property Company in Texas.
The Eastbound project has reflected the growing and shifting center of development projects during the COVID pandemic. During quarantine, disruptions and supply chain shortages have exposed vulnerabilities in the production stages of development. Clayton and Gideon discuss how they were able to overcome these challenges in order to continue moving this project forward. Join us on this week’s episode as we learn more about our guests’ current projects and examine the impact of COVID on the development of the Eastbound project.
“I think this project the partnership greatly benefited from having someone who typically focuses on commercial development and then the core group who is primarily a hospitality group. And I think we were all able to take cues from each other throughout the design process and approaching this project from a very experiential standpoint. I think when you think of the traditional office, it’s not a destination that people are looking forward to on Monday morning necessarily, but we wanted to try to create an experience that was similar to go into a new hotel for the first time or a new hotel bar or restaurant within the first floor of a hotel. So from our perspective, we wanna your data start from when you entered into the lobby, hearing music, being able to go to a coffee bar, being able to have an impromptu meeting in the lounge and really curating, curating more of a hospitality field and a traditional kind of standard office project.”
Courtesy of West of West
About Clayton Taylor
Clayton is a founding partner of West of West, an architectural design firm based in Portland Oregon. As a graduate of UCLA and California Polytechnic State University, he has led multiple creative office projects such as Columbia Square, Crossroads of the World, and The Telephone Building in the Los Angeles area. Clayton is also an NCARB certified architect.
Courtesy of Lincoln Property Company
About JR Gideon
In the summer of 2019, JR joined the Lincoln Austin team and currently assists development efforts in the emerging Austin office market. In addition to working with the development team, he analyzes market research and supports leasing efforts. JR is a graduate of UT Austin and worked for an architectural firm on the west coast through the professional residency program in the UT School of Architecture.
Courtesy of West of West and Lincoln Property Company
Episode Timestamps
2:50 – Both of you started out your careers working in the United States and in Europe. Could you compare and contrast what your experiences were and what you learned in both of those experiences?
6:52 – Lincoln Property Company focuses on mixed-use developments in urban areas. Could you dig more into what that strategy entails and where they might be going in the future?
11:06 – What were your larger impressions of the Eastbound site and how do you describe Eastbound Austin to other people?
17:28 – What was the prompt that Lincoln Property Company gave to you when they approached you for this project?
21:33 – How did you prevent supply chain delays from completely derailing the progress of the project?
26:28 – Give listeners a preview of what they would be seeing as they come to the main entrance where the restaurant is located and as they walk through the campus.
31:00 – There is now a trend in projects like this to include residential or hospitality aspects to an office development. Could you talk about that in more detail, including for example, the decision to include a large amount of outdoor space?
34:26 – Could you talk a little bit more about how you hope to draw more tenants to your site?
37:31 – Besides the Eastbound Austin project, LPC has a large portfolio office that's within the core downtown area. Could you talk about what your projections or your thoughts are in terms of offices moving towards neighborhoods?
39:36 – Could you talk about some of the ways that you see innovation being integrated into the processes that you focus on in terms of design and development?
Connect with Clayton Taylor and
JR Gideon:
West of West
LinkedIn (Clayton Taylor)
LinkedIn (JR Gideon)
Eastbound project
Courtesy of West of West and Lincoln Property Company
About your host:
Atif Qadir is the Founder & CEO of Commonplace, a technology company making it easy for commercial real estate professionals to find and use the $100B of real estate incentives given out every year in the US.
His work has been covered by Technology Review, The Real Deal, Commercial Observer, and Propmodo. He’s also a frequent speaker on the future of buildings and cities on popular industry podcasts and at conferences, including this past year at the Commercial Observer National DEI Conference, Yale AREA Conference, Columbia Real Estate Symposium, Open Data Week NYC and Austin Design Week.
About Commonplace
Commonplace is a founding sponsor of American Building. It is a 100% minority-owned, real estate technology company founded in 2020 to make financing social impact development projects across the US easier. It is funded by venture capital investors Hometeam Ventures, Park West Asset Management, New York Ventures and Shadow Ventures.
About Michael Graves
The world-famous design firm Michael Graves is also a founding sponsor of American Building. Its namesake, the iconoclastic designer Michael Graves, FAIA was a fierce advocate for people-centric design. His work defines a generation of American architecture and includes the Portland Building, the Humana Building and the Denver Public Library. The 1st season of American Building was filmed live at The Warehouse, his historic home in Princeton, New Jersey:
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