$180 million mixed-use project envisioned for Hill’s Cafe site on Austin’s South Congress Avenue

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Dean Goodnight recalls working as a busboy at Hill’s Cafe on South Congress Avenue when he was five.

That was 55 years ago.

Even though the family recently sold the 15-acre property at 4700 South Congress Avenue and mixed-use development is planned for the property, Goodnight’s ties to the property remain.

Goodnight said his family kept a financial stake in the land and the planned project. He said the family intends to help transform the site with a project that will include more than 600 homes, plus retail and office space, a hotel – and possibly a new life for Hill’s Cafe, which has a restaurant and live venue -Music could include Vor.

Goodnight and the new owners / developers say they want to incorporate a revitalized iteration of Hill’s Cafe to carry into future generations. The restaurant and music venue, a landmark of the South Congress for more than 70 years, has been closed since 2018. An earlier mixed-use development of the site, which was planned a few years ago, was not implemented.

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“We are still very optimistic about South Austin, and so we want to stay involved in this project in the South Congress and not just pay out money,” Goodnight told the American Statesman.

Mac Pike, chairman of Austin-based Sutton Co., said his company purchased the 13.8-acre Hill’s Cafe property in July along with a hotel on the property, the Classic Inn, which sits on approximately one acre .

The planned development is initially referred to as the Hill’s Cafe project. Pike said the two planned phases could add up to a $ 180 million project.

“We hope we can revive Hill’s Cafe in some form (although we don’t know what that will look like. For now, that’s our goal,” Pike told the statesman.

Development in phases

Pike said Hill’s Cafe’s new development team plans to begin construction on the first phase of the proposed project, which would consist of 400 apartments, by mid-2022. He said the apartments will be on the west side of the project, up to the tributary of Williamson Creek.

The first units could be opened around 18 months after the start of construction.

According to Pike, in the first phase of the project, Sutton Co. is working with KOA Partners, based in Dallas, and Atalaya Capital, based in New York City, who, according to Pike, are capital partners of the General Partnership. The developers have received a $ 13.7 million loan from Madison Realty Capital to buy the site and begin some initial pre-development work, Pike said. The architect of the Hill’s Cafe project is the IBI Group.

The current management team will continue to operate the Classic Inn, although both the hotel and Hill’s Cafe will ultimately be demolished to make way for the new project, Pike said.

Pike said the site already has the required zoning, but both phases require building permits and other permits from the city – a process he said is in the works.

The zoning allows for multi-family and mixed-use development of up to 60 feet, Pike said.

Pike said the first phase of the apartments will consist of two buildings, going from three to five stories, around a parking garage for about eight acres.

The development would have a second phase with 250 smaller “micro-unit” apartments; a building with 100,000 square feet of office space; a hotel with around 180 guest rooms; Salesroom; and ideally a reborn Hill’s Cafe and music venue.

The development is the latest planned for the South Congress’s up and coming St. Elmo area, south of Ben White Boulevard.

Austin-based real estate expert Charles Heimsath describes the area as “certainly one of the emerging” hot “submarkets,” with more new projects proposed and under construction. These include condominiums and apartments, restaurants, breweries, music venues, and other developments.

“The St. Elmo area is booming,” said Pike.

Tim Harrington, senior vice president of Commercial Industrial Properties who represented Sutton Co. in the purchase of Hill’s Cafe property, said he has known both the buyer and seller for years and is hoping for a project that is “some of” that Austin feeling “based on the example of the apartment complex around the legendary music venue Broken Spoke.

“We have to keep our music, our musicians, in town,” said Harrington. “A great music venue here (on the Hill’s Cafe grounds) would be fantastic.”

The story of Hill’s Cafe

Dean Goodnight said Hill’s Cafe opened in 1947 and the adjoining motel opened even earlier, in 1941. Back then, the South Congress was known as the Austin-San Antonio Highway, Goodnight said before Interstate 35 was built.

Goodnight said his great-uncle Merle Goodnight bought some of the original space Hill’s Cafe would eventually be on in the 1930s after he got tired of his gas station in Congress and Riverside floods and moved it further south to Congress.

“That’s how he ended up where we are now,” said Dean Goodnight.

The hotel on the property was originally called Goodnight Court, later Goodnight Motel, and finally Classic Inn. The motel has not been owned by the Goodnight family since 1965, Dean Goodnight said.

The cafe shared a wall with the motel lobby, which it still does to this day.

The café opened as a small restaurant in 1947 under the original owner, Sam Hill (hence the name Hill’s Cafe). Dean Goodnight said his great-uncle and Sam Hill were partners from 1947 to 1957.

When Hill decided to get out of the restaurant business, Dean Goodnight said his father Charlie Goodnight bought the restaurant and business. Dean Goodnight said his father expanded the cafe over the years, growing it into one of the largest independently owned restaurants in the Austin area in the 1960s and 1970s.

The restaurant had a difficult time in the mid to late 1980s when the taste of food changed and “big steaks” fell out of favor, said Dean Goodnight. The cafe got a second life around 2000 when Bob Cole and his partners from radio station Austin stepped in for an al fresco dining and music venue, Dean Goodnight said.

Goodnight now hopes that the proposed development will breathe new life into Hill’s Cafe.

“I think it would be a plus for what’s ultimately being developed around it,” he said, adding that the Goodnight family “is going nowhere. We will continue to be involved in the project as it progresses. “

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