What's the latest on a developer's 6th Street rejuvenation project

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Jesse Fortney owns a bar near Sixth and Brazos Street, an intersection he calls "kind of like a desolate zombie land."

One corner houses the now-abandoned Buffalo Billiards, which closed in 2020.

"It's just become a haven for crime and bad things," Fortney said of the space outside. Several other stretches of abandoned buildings exist in other areas of Sixth Street as well.

Private security guards hired by downtown businesses to patrol certain intersections on Sixth Street say they consistently see loitering, vandalism and evidence of drug activity.

"I deal with crime every day because of these boarded up buildings."

Jesse Fortney, Sixth Street business owner

Stream Realty bought and is working on re-tenanting a "sizeable number" of these properties, according to the real estate service's attorney Richard Suttle.

In January, he told KXAN he expected a "rejuvenation" of Sixth Street "over the next few months."

With little sign of that seen from the street level, KXAN asked him about the status of Stream's projects on Sixth Street.

"We've been putting together a robust leasing program, we're getting a lot of good interest, trying to keep it to restaurants and retail," he said. "We have a lot of interior demolition going on that you would not see from the outside, but we're getting some of those buildings ready for re-tenanting."

Suttle said he could not go into detail on specific businesses and their leasing statuses because of confidentiality measures put in place, but said again that the public will start to see changes in another few months. He added that part of the plan includes building a downtown leasing office where interested prospects can meet with Stream personnel to discuss downtown options.

Fortney wants the process to move more quickly and said he's considering closing down his bar on Sixth Street and putting his focus into his businesses elsewhere in Central Texas.

"If you walk up on a block that's boarded and desolate, you're not gonna go down that block," he said. "It's so tough to run a business down here."

Both Fortney and Suttle have the same goal.

"As an Austinite, I hope we can get it back to what it used to be, where families used to go down there, could go to a show, walk around, get it back to being our signature street in our city," he said.

Fortney said a fully-in-business Sixth Street would mean "all the world" to him.

"To have an open and thriving Sixth Street would be night and day, it would make all the difference," he said.

KXAN will check back in monthly to update you on Stream's progress.