Shipping Containers Create a Backyard Feel for Tenants at Austin Business Park
When developer Mike McGlashan set out to add amenities to his 300-acre business park in Austin, Texas, he wanted to do it while staying true to the city’s mantra to “Keep Austin Weird.”
To do that, McGlashan decided on building a retail and coworking destination entirely with shipping containers, instead of traditional construction materials.
McGlashan, who leads the Austin office of Karlin Real Estate, now hopes the shipping containers, configured by Mark Odom Studio, don’t just attract visitors, but shift the paradigm when it comes to food, beverage and entertainment at the workplace in the Lone Star State’s rapidly growing capital.
Karlin’s hospitality destination is called The Pitch, which takes its name from the adjacent practice facility for Major League Soccer’s Austin FC, which debuted in 2021 as Austin’s first major professional sports team. The Pitch isn’t just a bonus for office workers; it doubles as a pregame and watch party spot for Austin’s beloved new team.
“Culturally, soccer is such a great match for Austin,” architect Mark Odom told LoopNet. “And it seems like it's bringing a wave of enthusiasm throughout the city.”
Building Blocks
Billed as a first-of-its-kind design in Austin, The Pitch is made up of 23 repurposed shipping containers on a half-acre site within Karlin’s Parmer Austin business park. Odom stacked the containers to create five, two-story “buildings” with varying square footage and uses for guests.
Custom stairs, vertical tube steel railings and overhead trellises tie together the levels, while three 40-foot-tall shipping containers bookend the site as wayfinding points, functioning as restrooms and electrical rooms at ground level. A 21-foot-tall mass timber pavilion with steel apertures helps anchor the design.
Besides the shipping containers, all the other elements of The Pitch were handcrafted by steel fabricators.
“Nothing was off the shelf, so to speak,” Odom said.
The Pitch is centered around a grove of trees, with views of a nearby pond and downtown Austin. Some spaces overlook Parmer Field, where Austin FC practices. The site, once flat, was heavily landscaped to help the containers absorb grade changes to the land.
The team added trees to the central grove to create “a backyard feel, with chairs and fire pits and things that you could comfortably sit around,” Odom said. “We were able to peel back the landscape and then when you walk through the retaining walls and the land, you arrive in the belly of the container, The Pitch.”
The ground-level containers host local food vendors ranging from a Vietnamese rotisserie chicken restaurant to a burger bar serving Wagyu beef. The second-level containers serve as viewing decks, coworking office space, and party rooms for Austin FC games or other events. Outside there are abundant TVs, sand volleyball courts and walking paths. Many of the shipping containers are painted lime green, in tribute to Austin FC’s team colors.
“Especially in the age of COVID, we're dealing with ways to [move people outdoors] and integrate into the larger park and mix it up,” McGlashan said. “It's kind of encouraging employees to come back and try new things, outside of maybe sitting at a cubicle or a desk all day, five days a week.”
‘There Were Challenges Every Day’
Neither Odom nor Karlin had previously completed a project of this scale using solely shipping containers. The development process – from conceptualization to delivery – took about two years.
“We had to figure out a lot very quickly,” Odom said.
His team, for much of the project, designed The Pitch without knowing who the tenants would be. So, they planned based on the broad notion of using food vendors on the ground level and keeping the second floor flexible. Odom believes that flexibility will enable different uses in the future at The Pitch, which opened in February. The lighting, building materials and acoustics are meant to fit a variety of uses including office space or private parties.
“I think it worked out very well and [will inform] how The Pitch will get programmed through its lifetime,” Odom said.
A bigger challenge was installing mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems without taking up too much space, and still maintaining the minimalist aesthetic that shipping containers offer.
“That took a huge amount of coordination that was pretty difficult,” Odom said. “We figured out early how much minimum depth of space we could get away with on the walls and the ceiling and underneath, and we stuck to it. And that meant that we had to get the trades in early. We had to make sure that they understood that there was an efficiency pattern to everyone’s involvement that needed to maintain this certain realm of depth on every side.”
McGlashan agreed that the novelty of building with shipping containers brought challenges in the form of mystery to the development team.
“It was a little bit of a learn-as-you-go experience,” he said. “We weren’t quite sure how the kitchens were going to function, how the space would be used and what it would look like when they're stacked. So there certainly were some challenges going through it, but what we've found so far with steel reinforcement and other things, there's a lot of optionality and possibilities with these containers. You don't only have to look at a rectangle that's on the ground, but you can stack them, cantilever them and find ways to create interesting shapes that create interesting architecture. And then once you throw in a good [food and beverage] experience, it creates something special.”
The space pulls double duty appealing to both business tenants and Austin FC fans, staying open through the weekend. Besides watch parties for soccer games, the venue hosts movie and trivia nights, live music and free “pup cups” and dog treats on Sundays.
McGlashan said The Pitch has license agreements with its vendors, some of which are “white label” concepts with the operator’s branding. Terms are fluid. Each container grouping at The Pitch includes a full kitchen and air-conditioned seating area.
Keeping Up with Workers’ Needs
The Pitch is the latest addition to Parmer Austin, a 1.8 million-square-foot business park with tenants including Apple, 3M and The Home Depot. Another 860,000 square feet, nearly half of which is pre-leased by BAE Systems, is under construction. Between 5,000 and 6,000 employees worked at the business park before the pandemic, McGlashan said, but there were no places at the business park to grab a quick coffee or get some work done outside of the office.
There’s pressure to add new amenities as growing companies — particularly tech companies such as TikTok, Meta, Google and Snapchat — continue to sign office leases in Austin for large amounts of space.
“You think about an employee going to Starbucks in the morning and drinking a coffee and working there. We want to create the same kind of environment here,” McGlashan said. “We're really excited to be able to deliver The Pitch and hopefully deliver what we promised during all those tenant interviews and tenant meetings. We'll continue to expand and try to evolve and adapt to changing trends and continue to try to build a place where employers and employees want to be. We're thrilled with what Parmer Austin is now, but we’re not done yet.”
