A different starting point for condominium living
On June 29, 2026, The Ivory opened at 1309 Chicon Street in East Austin as the city’s first carless condominium community. The development includes 53 residential units and three commercial spaces. Its defining choice is not simply the absence of conventional parking; it is the effort to pair homeownership with several ways for residents to move through the neighborhood and beyond without depending on a private car for every trip.
That combination gives the project a practical focus. The Ivory is designed around two needs that often meet in the same household budget: finding a home that is within reach and managing the cost of transportation. Forty of the community’s homes are reserved for households earning at or below 70% of median family income. The remaining 13 homes are market-rate. Together, those numbers make affordability a central part of the project rather than a side feature.
Affordability is built into the numbers
The 40 income-restricted homes are being provided through Austin’s Affordability Unlocked program, according to independent reporting by KUT News republished by Austin Current. That structure makes The Ivory a concrete example of how a city can use its housing policies to support ownership opportunities for households who might otherwise face a difficult search for a home in a growing urban area. The available source material does not establish what each household will pay or how residents’ finances will change, so the clearest measure here is the number of homes reserved and the income level attached to them.
The project also places those homes in a setting intended to support daily life without requiring every resident to own a vehicle. The source pack describes the community as walkable in context and identifies transportation costs as part of the broader challenge it addresses. That does not mean a car-free lifestyle will fit every household or every trip. It does mean the development is testing whether ownership can be made more attainable when a home is planned alongside alternatives to private-car dependence.
Mobility is part of the housing package
The Ivory’s transportation features are unusually specific. The site includes an on-site CapMetro bus stop with a cover, a bike-share station, two shared electric vehicles, mobility credits, and transit passes. KUT News’ reporting also describes e-bikes among the mobility options available to residents. These features give people several ways to choose how they travel, depending on the distance, weather, timing, and purpose of a trip.
The details matter because transportation alternatives work best when they are close at hand. A bus stop on the property reduces the need to reach transit before a trip begins. A bike-share station provides another option for shorter journeys. Shared electric vehicles offer access to a car when one is useful without making private ownership the only way to get behind the wheel. Mobility credits and transit passes add support for using those systems, rather than leaving residents to absorb every transportation cost on their own.
A carless community still has to be useful
Calling The Ivory “carless” describes the development’s approach to parking and mobility, not a requirement that residents never use cars. The two shared electric vehicles acknowledge that some trips may still call for one. The design instead shifts the question from “Where will every household park its own car?” to “What combination of options can help residents reach the places they need to go?” That is a smaller and more practical question, especially when a community provides several answers at the same address.
The project’s scale may also make the experiment easier to understand. With 53 homes, The Ivory is large enough to serve a substantial group of residents while remaining a defined community where the transportation features are visible and shared. The development also includes three commercial spaces, connecting the residential project to uses beyond housing. The source pack does not establish how those spaces will be occupied, so their future role should be understood as part of the project’s design rather than as a completed outcome.
A model with limits—and useful questions
The Ivory does not settle every question about affordable ownership, transit access, or the future of parking in Austin. The available sources do not report long-term resident outcomes, vehicle-use patterns, household savings, or whether the project will be replicated elsewhere. Those are questions for continued observation. What can be said now is more measured: Austin has opened a condominium community that combines income-restricted ownership opportunities with transportation resources located at the development itself.
That combination gives the project significance beyond its parking count. The Ivory treats mobility as part of the housing conversation, not as a separate problem residents must solve after moving in. For the 40 households eligible for the income-restricted homes, the arrangement offers a path to ownership alongside access to transit, bike-share, shared electric vehicles, mobility credits, and passes. For Austin, it provides a concrete local example of how housing policy and transportation planning can be designed to work together—carefully, practically, and with the results still to be learned.
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