For New York transplants Tanya Erlach and Matthew Diffee, downtown offers big city urbanism with a distinctly Austin twist.
bit more green and reducing their carbon footprint—they’ll walk rather than drive their cars.” And though it’s easy to mistake the bustle of downtown Austin for brusqueness, Levy says it couldn’t be further from the truth. “You live in close quarters,” she observes. “There isn’t a yard separating you from your neighbors, and everybody’s very understanding—it’s almost like communal living.” Above all, what Levy loves most about downtown Austin is the feeling that the entire city is at her fingertips. “I feel like we have it all within a mile radius,” she admits. “We can go to the park, eat outside, visit the pool, make a trip to the grocery store, go to the movies, the children’s museum, run on the trail—we can do almost anything and not even use our car.” Furthermore, with The Boutique Real Estate office and her husband’s company, East End Ink,
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close by, she’s able to “live, work and play downtown.” Since making the move to downtown, Levy has watched her neighborhood blossom with art galleries, restaurants and bars. The development of the 2nd Street District has especially struck her over the years: between ACL Live at the Moody Theater and the Violet Crown Cinema, she says, “all of 2nd Street is our new date-night destination!” Though she’s seen many of her fellow downtown residents retire to the suburbs due to the influx of growth, Levy and her husband can’t imagine leaving. “We’ve seen downtown come from vacant warehouses to a full-blown, revitalized neighborhood, and it keeps growing every day,” she says. “I think it’s going to be an even more vibrant community five years from now than it is today.”