Austin issues 17 electrical permits for the fit-out of 176 SMART Housing apartments at 1706 Payton Gin Road in 78758 - six floors of homes and a 90,834 square foot garage on the site of a 1969 church, a project the city's zoning file records as proposed 100% affordable

The City of Austin issued 17 electrical permits on Friday 30 October at 1706 Payton Gin Road in 78758, its Issued Construction Permits record shows: one for each floor of a six-floor apartment building, one for its parking garage, two for canopies, and the rest for its amenity rooms. Every row carries the city's "[SMART HOUSING]" label and the words "Commercial Expedited Review".

The floor rows give the city's own count of homes on each: "Interior Finish Out of Multi-Family Units Bldg 2 Floor 6 (42432 SF)", 34 units (permit 2026-032776 EP); 34 on each of floors 5, 4 and 3; 33 on floor 2; and 7 on the first floor, in 15,658 square feet. The garage row reads "New Construction of Parking Garage (90834 SF)", two floors (2026-032777 EP). The 176 is not a sum of ours: it is the figure on the shell permit.

That shell permit, 2026-032762 BP, was issued on 31 March 2026 to the applicant the city names as Roers Companies, for "New Multi-Family Residential Apartments with amenities and common area spaces (Shell Only) (232157 SF)": 176 housing units, six floors, and a declared total valuation of $1,000,000. The city carries the same $1,000,000 on the garage's building permit and on both canopy permits, so it is one project's figure, not four. Plumbing permits for the same floors were issued on 4 and 8 September.

The lot's zoning file, case C14-2024-0026, "Payton Gin Apartments", describes a 2.05-acre site then holding the Austin Brethren Church, rezoned from LR-CO-NP to GR-NP on the staff's recommendation (Planning Commission 14 May 2024, City Council 30 May 2024 on the sheet) for 194 multi-family units under the Affordability Unlocked program, "proposing a 100% affordable apartment project". The owner is given as 1800 Payton Gin LLC. The church came down under permit 2026-059546 BP, "Demolition of church structure and shed approximately 5500 sq ft (circa 1969)", final on 15 May 2026. The sheet places the site 0.1 miles east of the North Burnet/Gateway Station Regional Center, with a bus stop adjacent on Galewood Drive, and names its schools as Padron Elementary, Burnet Middle School and Navarro Early College High School.

The two programme labels are the city's. Its development incentives page says Affordability Unlocked "waives or modifies some development restrictions in exchange for providing affordable housing": for rentals the affordable units "must serve households with incomes averaging at or below 60% of the median family income (MFI), with a portion of those serving households up to 50% MFI, for 40 years", in return for setting aside half of a development's units. SMART Housing gives "fee waivers for development permits in exchange for onsite income-restricted units". The permit rows do not state which share applies to the building as permitted; the zoning proposal was 194 homes, the permit is 176.

The state's accessibility registration, TABS2025016521, registered 12 April 2025, describes "5 levels of 176 residential apartments, amenities, common area spaces, and a 228-stall parking garage", a start date of 2 June 2025 and a completion date of 2 April 2027. Its estimated cost of $750,000 covers only the 7,540 square feet of "Public transaction and support facilities" it registers, so neither it nor the permit's $1,000,000 is the cost of the building. The owner's address is in Plymouth, Minnesota; the design firm is Kaas Wilson Architecture.

On the same city datasets, 78758 had 20 permits issued in the 72 hours to Sunday morning, three of them for new construction, 25 code complaint cases opened and 84 current short-term rental licences. The city's permit detail pages sit behind a captcha to our reader, so the dataset rows are the record quoted here. The ZIP's own page carries its full record, and what's coming lists the city's open cases there.