All eyes (well — at least 4) were on 3910 Kirby just north of 59 yesterday as excavators began snacking on the space formerly occupied by South Indian restaurant Madras Pavilion: reader J. Clark captured some sky-high views of the ongoing demolition; another anonymous tipster snapped shots from lower levels and the ground. The Corporate Plaza III building (shown en déshabillé above) also previously housed Central-American restaurant Red Onion and sushi joint Miyako.
A fence has gone up around both Corporate Plaza III and Corporate Plaza II, next door at 3930 Kirby. Demo permits for both structures were issued on Friday, and work began yesterday morning to bring the northern building down. Corporate Plaza I, the taller sibling of the doomed twins, is visible on the right behind the parking garage on the same property:
The Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff does her level best to decipher and explain the strange sequence of events at Skanska’s ongoing demolition-construction-demolition-construction project across the street from Pennzoil Place: “The developer planning 
Permits for Apache Corporation’s planned 34-story tower on Post Oak Blvd. next to the new Whole Foods Market have “just been granted approval” from the city, writes Roxanna Asgarian. The reporter also notes that the permits for the project were filed way back in December 2013. But any regulatory delays appear to be no big deal for the independent oil and gas company. 
“The perceived blandness of modern office buildings has nothing to do with the lack of vision or enthusiasm of developers, it has to do with where the money comes from today. Decades ago there were eccentric millionaires and corporations with money to burn on monuments of their own egos, but these days money only comes from carefully calculated, vetted, reexamined, audited, and risk assessed finance packages. Throw in a healthy dose of anti-wealth and anti-corporate profit sentiment in the US and you have the real estate equivalent of a Toyota Camry — simple, functional, non-offensive, and very forgettable.” [
