Last July, American Campus Communities purchased the 2100 block on Guadalupe Street, which includes the Goodall Wooten, a former student residential building. Now, American Campus is planning a student housing community that will replace the Goodall Wooten and have ground floor retail. 

Last spring, the roughly 60 residents of the Wooten were given a month’s notice to move out of the dormitory building, as reported by The Daily Texan.

American Campus, a publicly traded real estate investment trust, invests in dormitory housing for students across the country. Some of their properties in West Campus include The Callaway House, The Castilian and The Block. Nearly 5,000 students in Austin, including hundreds of UT students, live in American Campus housing, said Gina Cowart, vice president of marketing communications and brand strategy for American Campus.

“Our mission is to consistently provide every resident with an environment conducive to healthy living, personal growth, academic achievement and professional success,” Cowart said.

The project is in the early stages of conceptual design, said Chuck Carroll, vice president of development for American Campus. The company chose to develop the Goodall Wooten property because of its location across the street from the University, Carroll said.

“I walk down 2100 Guadalupe Street every day to class and have never had a second thought about that building and thought it was just a run-down apartment complex,” business freshman McKenna Granberry said.

Cowart said when American Campus purchased the property, the Goodall Wooten had significant maintenance and safety issues in the confinements of the residential portion. American Campus was not comfortable allowing the building to continue to operate as student housing, Cowart said.

Carroll said the company has no definitive timeline for the redevelopment of the property as there are city codes and ordinances that “heavily regulate” what can be done. 

The building will most likely be demolished and rebuilt, but it will have to fall within the City’s height restrictions of approximately 60 feet for that particular zone, which is regulated by the University Neighborhood Overlay, Carroll said.

Cowart and Carroll said this project is a great opportunity to bring the space “back to life.”

“We recognized that it was is an incredible location for students on the Drag adjacent to the University,” Carroll said.