A 74-story tower planned for downtown Austin's Rainey district has landed a luxury hotel brand for the project.

1 Hotels, which bills itself a sustainably focused luxury brand, will join the mixed-use development at 98 Red River St., along Waller Creek. The project's plans call for 352 apartments, 686,000 square feet of office space and a 251-room hotel.

The tower — which will be the tallest building in Austin if completed as planned — has not officially been named and 1 Hotels did not say when the location is expected to open. Augustine Verrengia, civil market leader with WGI, the project's civil engineering firm, said earlier this year that 98 Red River will be more than 1,000 feet tall.

1 Hotel Austin will include a pool on the 16th floor of the tower and will have spanning views of Austin and the Waller Creek greenway below, the company said.

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"When we open our doors, our guests will immerse themselves in the energetic attractions of the Austin creative community while simultaneously serving a restorative relationship to the Hill Country's natural beauty," 1 Hotels Founder and CEO Barry Sternlicht said in a written statement.

The Rainey Street property marks 1 Hotels' entry into the Texas market. The company has hotels in New York, West Hollywood, South Beach, Toronto, San Francisco and China.

Lincoln Property and Kairoi Residential are developing the 98 Red River high-rise, which upon completion could become the tallest building in Texas. The current tallest high-rise in the state is the 75-story, 1,002-foot JPMorgan Chase Tower (formerly Texas Commerce Tower) in downtown Houston.

In Austin, 98 Red River is expected to be taller than another skyscraper currently under construction — a 66-story, 875-foot-tall mixed-use tower named Sixth and Guadalupe after its location downtown. Sixth and Guadalupe is also being developed by Lincoln Property and Kairoi Residential.

Currently, Austin's tallest completed building is the 58-story Independent — nicknamed the "Jenga tower" for its offset design — which is 690 feet tall.

1 Hotels is operated by SH Hotels & Resorts, which is an affiliate of global private investment firm Starwood Capital Group. 1 Hotels launched in 2015 and currently has projects in development in cities including Nashville, Cabo San Lucas, Paris, London, Copenhagen and Melbourne.

Austin market bouncing back

The 1 Hotels announcement comes as Austin's hotel market continues to rebound from the economic blow dealt by the COVID-19 pandemic. Paul Vaughn, senior vice president at Source Strategies, a San Antonio-based consulting firm that tracks the lodging industry, said the Austin market is "on a strong path, but it will still be recovering lost ground over the course of the next year or more."

The downtown Austin hotel market, with its concentration of higher-priced hotels, was hit hard during the pandemic and has been one of the slowest to recover in the Austin metro area, Vaughn said.

Across the entire five-county Austin-Round Rock region, overall hotel revenue in the first quarter more than doubled from the year-ago quarter and even topped overall revenue in the first quarter of 2019 by almost 11%, he said.

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"This is great news and points to a positive overall recovery trajectory, but some areas of the market are coming back faster than others," he said.

Leisure and personal travel have returned faster than business and group travel, he said. Luxury and upscale hotels that cater to higher-end business travelers have been even slower to recover.

Dewitt Peart, president and CEO of the Downtown Austin Alliance, said downtown has five hotels under construction and five more planned.

"In the next couple years we'll have 10 new hotels that will add about 1,000 rooms to downtown's hotel supply," Peart recently told the American-Statesman.

As the hotel industry emerges from the COVID downturn, Austin is being targeted by a number of luxury brands looking to enter the market.

When it comes to new hotel openings in 2022, Austin is second only to New York, according to a Lodging Econometrics report.

Of the top 50 markets in the U.S., New York is expected to have 77 hotels with 10,934 rooms, for a 9% growth rate. Austin is next with a forecast of 26 hotels with 3,387 rooms on the way, the report said.

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Among those on the way is a 17-story citizenM hotel, which is rising in a former parking lot in the heart of downtown at Colorado and Seventh streets. The hotel is expected to open in 2023.

"As an exciting cultural center and an influential tech and business hub, Austin has been on our radar for years," said Ernest Lee, citizenM's managing director for the Americas. "Now, with the city's emergence as one of North America's most significant destinations for knowledge workers, it is cementing its place on the national stage."

Other Austin downtown hotel projects in the works include two Hyatt-brand hotels at Fifth and Brazos Streets. Recently opened is boutique luxury hotel Thompson Austin, a 229-room property on San Jacinto that includes the smaller 193-unit tommie Austin at the same location.

Statesman reporter Shonda Novak contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Planned 74-story development in downtown to get luxury hotel