Dallas based AT&T, in the midst of serious competition for access to Austin’s incredibly innovative startup community, has announced plans for a Center for Innovation on downtown Austin’s Congress Avenue.
Part of a developing trend among technology companies to open offices in downtown Austin’s central corridor, AT&T’s new multimillion-dollar facility will be housed in 15,000 square feet of office space at the historic McKean-Eilers building at 323 Congress Ave and will include a public spaces for creative and collaborative coworking, as well as sharing the building with Chaotic Moon Studios, which is located on the second floor, and providing offices for AT&T.
“It’s an entryway into the various development units at AT&T,” shared AT&T Vice President and General Manager Dahna Hull. “It could serve as a replicable model for other cities.”
Divided into two floors, the first floor will have an open, creative space where artists and entrepreneurs can network and access resources, such as studios for the development of content, though it’s not entirely clear for whom such resources will be provided as a company press release cited that the studio will enable AT&T to create content that can be distributed via AT&T’s online, mobile and TV platforms.
An increasingly competitive marketplace, Austin is already home to serious competition with AT&T by way of Time Warner Cable, Google Fiber, Grande Communications, and Suddenlink Communications, all of whom are building super-high-speed services in the Austin area. Just last week, AT&T added the announcement of the rollout of their Gigapower network service to Austin but even in the collaborative work space market, Austin is rich with options by way of an already healthy community of collaborative spaces, and both WeWork and Galvenize rumored to be moving in just up the road from AT&T.
