I've been driving by the River Oaks Shopping Center on my way to and from work lately, to see when the demolition work would begin. Nothing happened last week, which I attributed in part to the heavy rains from TS Erin and the potential threat of Hurricane Dean. Turns out there was a more prosaic reason - Weingarten had not yet gotten the permit from the city to do demolition. They already had a sewer disconnect permit, but either the weather was holding them off or they were waiting to have both birds in hand before commencing. Whatever the case, Matt Stiles reports that they now have the demolition permit, so there's nothing left to hold them back. We'll see how long it takes now.

By the way, the comments on that Stiles post are pretty amusing. I especially like the one from Cory, who seems to think there's this vast cyber-nexus of River Oaks Shopping Center/Rick Noriega for Senate supporters out there who are just waiting for the word from me to lend their names and dollars to these causes I deem worthy. Why, just the mere presence of the all-powerful hyperlinks in my posts are enough to get them to do my nefarious bidding. Pardon me for a minute while I rub my hands together and cackle with glee. Oh, the power! I love the power. Thankfully, I choose to use it for good, and not for evil.

Anyway. I'll try to get some pix of the demolition once it starts. Then we'll see if this construction project gets started any faster than some of the others around town that haven't happened yet.