Cousins Properties has sold One Eleven Congress, a 30-story office tower in downtown Austin, Texas, to Fort Worth-based Canyon Creek Real Estate for $208 million. The deal, which closed July 29, marks the newly formed investment firm’s entry into the Austin market and adds another nine-figure data point to a capital-markets story in which buyers are once again willing to pay up for Central Business District office towers.
The transaction is documented in Cousins’ own second-quarter 2026 earnings release, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 30. In that Form 8-K filing, Atlanta-based Cousins (NYSE: CUZ) disclosed that, “subsequent to quarter end,” it sold the roughly 519,000-square-foot property “for a gross sales price of $208.0 million” on July 29, 2026. The filing does not name the buyer, but Austin-area business press has identified Canyon Creek Real Estate as the purchaser.
Canyon Creek was formed in 2025 and is led by John Holt, Ben Stephens and Justin Prachyl, three principals who previously worked together at Woodside Capital Partners. One Eleven Congress is the firm’s first publicly reported acquisition in Austin.
Built in 1987 at 111 Congress Ave., One Eleven Congress is a stepped, pyramid-shaped tower that has long ranked among Austin’s largest office buildings by square footage. Cousins had owned the property since 2016. The ground floor houses Fareground, a food hall, along with a conference center and a fitness facility, and tenants have included law firms and professional-services companies. Austin-area business press has put the tower’s leased occupancy at roughly 90% earlier this year, and reported that brokerage Eastdil Secured represented Cousins in the sale; RealtyWire has not independently confirmed the occupancy figure or the brokerage’s role with either firm.
Neither Cousins nor Canyon Creek had issued a deal-specific press release as of publication. Cousins’ SEC disclosure frames the sale as one piece of a broader capital-recycling push: the same earnings release notes that Cousins also sold the 173,000-square-foot Research Park Plaza V, also in Austin, for $42 million during the second quarter, and separately increased its ownership stake in a Phoenix office property.
What it means. The verified facts β the $208 million price, the July 29 closing date and the roughly 519,000-square-foot building size β come directly from Cousins’ SEC filing, the seller’s own regulatory disclosure. The buyer’s identity, the tower’s occupancy rate, its brokerage representation and its standing among Austin’s largest towers are drawn from Austin-area business press coverage rather than a company filing or release, and RealtyWire is presenting them as reported rather than independently verified.
On the larger question of what the sale signals, this is RealtyWire analysis rather than a verified fact: Austin’s office market has spent much of the past three years as a prominent example of the broader downtown office glut, with elevated vacancy and falling valuations weighing on older Class A towers citywide. A $208 million trade for a nearly 40-year-old high-rise β well above the roughly $100 million threshold that typically signals a market-moving deal β could be read as evidence that institutional and private capital see Austin office values approaching a bottom. It could just as easily reflect Cousins’ own disposition strategy of shedding older Austin assets to redeploy capital elsewhere, a pattern consistent with the REIT’s other second-quarter sales. Both readings can be true at once, and one transaction, even a large one, is not proof that Austin’s office market has turned a corner.
The sale follows a string of large Texas office trades this year. In Houston, Williams Companies bought its namesake Williams Tower for $300 million, while office investors elsewhere have also been testing valuations on aging towers, including Strada Investment Group’s $103 million purchase of a San Francisco office building. Whether Canyon Creek’s bet on One Eleven Congress proves similarly opportunistic, or gets ahead of a market still working through excess supply, will depend on leasing activity in downtown Austin over the next several quarters. RealtyWire has covered related office-market shifts in the Sun Belt, including Phoenix’s third straight quarterly decline in office vacancy, a market some investors see as a leading indicator for Austin. More coverage of large office and mixed-use transactions is available on RealtyWire’s commercial real estate page.
