Trammell Crow Company selling Google-leased Austin Sail Tower

Trammell Crow Company is under contract to sell an iconic downtown Austin office tower, where Google is reportedly shedding space, for $521.8 million.

Block 185, also known as the Sail Tower, spans 800,000 square feet at 601 West 2nd Street, near the Second Street District.

The buyer is Atlanta-based Cousins Properties, which expects the transaction to close this month. Eastdil Secured is the exclusive advisor on the transaction.

Trammell Crow developed the building with MSD Capital and delivered it in 2022.

Google pre-leased the entire building in 2021 but never moved in, and it has put 90,000 square feet up for sublease. Google’s lease in the building runs until 2038, according to Cousins Properties.

The building is just a few blocks away from Cousins’ downtown Austin office portfolio, which totals 1.7 million square feet. The firm owns eight properties in the city, according to its website. They include Domain 9, at 2904 Palm Way in The Domain, where it is spending $60.5 million to build-out space for online retailer Amazon, and 300 Colorado, which is partially leased to social media company TikTok.

If the sale of 601 West 2nd Street closes, it would rank as the priciest office transaction in Austin this year. The most-expensive so far this year was Brandywine’s $107.6 million sale of One and Two Barton Skyway, at 1501 and 1601 South Mopac Expressway, to the City of Austin last month, according to CoStar.

The Austin office market’s vacancy rate hit a record high of 24.3 percent this summer, as developers delivered 2.1 million square feet of space, according to JLL.

Highpoint 2222, Karlin’s renovation of the old 3M campus, added 1.2 million square feet to the Far Northwest submarket. And Jay Paul Company’s Springdale Green added 833,000 square feet in East Austin.However, there have been notable leases, such as PayPal’s 90,000-square-foot expansion, and Wise PLC’s 60,700-square-foot lease, both in Stonelake Capital Partners’ Domain Tower 2.