GEORGE MITCHELL WANTS TO BUY GALVESTON PIERS 
Billionaire George Mitchell’s Mitchell Historic Properties has been leasing Piers 19-22 on the dock side of Galveston since 1993. The leases don’t expire until 2065, but he now wants to buy the properties from the city. Sitting on the piers: the Harbor House Hotel and Marina and a couple of Landry’s-owned restaurants. Mitchell claims he wants to make improvements to the docks that would make more development possible. The sale would require a city charter amendment and voter approval, which the company hopes would take place next May. [Galveston County Daily News] Photo: TripAdvisor
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A new report from Rice University’s Shell Center for Sustainability includes a few suggestions for the future of Galveston: step all development back from the beach in anticipation of continuing erosion; use a map of the island’s cataloged geohazards to guide where development should go; or permanently abandon the west end of the island entirely. That third recommendation comes with 2 possible natural enforcement mechanisms: a projected future hurricane headed for the western tip of the island, or a combination of sea-level rise and continuing retreat of the shoreline. All 3 scenarios encourage concentrating residents and visitors in the “higher, thicker, wider” East End. A collaboration between earth scientists and the School of Architecture chock-full of charts and diagrams, the Atlas of Sustainable Strategies for Galveston Island includes a series of large-scale design proposals cooked up by Rice architecture students.
DISTURBING DETAILS FROM THE FLAGSHIP HOTEL DEMO ACCIDENT 
A letter written by Grant MacKay Demolition owner Grant MacKay paints a harrowing picture of the circumstances surrounding the death of 65-year-old company worker Tauelangi Angilau in a collapse at the former Flagship Hotel on April 26th. In the letter, obtained from the city of Galveston by reporter Chris Paschenko, MacKay writes that he yelled for someone to retrieve 2 fuel cans he spotted in an area where a collapse appeared imminent. Two workers responded by running toward a portion of the structure a structural engineer later said “they were not supposed to be anywhere near.”: “’I immediately yelled at them to not go under the second floor slab above, but to get a shovel and reach for them from below (pier level),’ Grant MacKay wrote. ‘They either did not hear me or just ignored me.’ Workers continued to yell at the men to come out from under the slab, Grant MacKay wrote. . . . ‘At that precise moment, the north half of all the west bays began to collapse,’ Grant MacKay wrote. ‘We continued to yell that it was falling. Raphael heard us and jumped off, escaping the collapse. Tau didn’t move.’†[Galveston County Daily News; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Click2Houston
JACK JOHNSON, STILL DRAWING THE CROWDS IN GALVESTON 
On the agenda for the next meeting of GRACE, the homeownership organization in charge of The Oaks housing development at 4300 Broadway in Galveston: A discussion of Earl Jones’s sculpture of former world heavyweight boxing champion and Galveston native Jack Johnson, carved out of the trunk of a subdivision oak tree killed by Hurricane Ike. Homeowners association President Frank Rivera has been campaigning to have the stature moved. His complaint: That the Johnson statue was bringing a stream of tourists and other visitors to the neighborhood, creating traffic and disrupting the peace. But a canvas of residents over the weekend by 2 housing authority board members turned up only 2 who said they didn’t want the sculpture. [Galveston County Daily News; background; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Click2Houston
Yes, there’s a mini seawall wrapped around the base of this Ostermeyer Rd. winner in Baybridge Estates in Galveston — and it “protected the home” from Hurricane Ike, according to the listing. Other Galvestonian touches to this 4-bedroom, 4-bath house on a hill, constructed in 2005 by Rawlins Residential Builders: Rough-textured travertine tile at the front entrance, and a big first-floor washroom suitable for summertime sandy swimsuit removal operations. The 1.3-acre lot includes a long driveway entrance across a pond and other only occasionally submerged terrain. And then you get to this:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: NOTHING TO FEAR BUT AN ATTACK OF ZOMBIE PIRATES “You expected they would swim in from the Gulf?” [Ian V, commenting on Galveston, You Have Been Warned: Zombies Will Come from the North]
Following up on this shocking reader-submitted photo of a TxDOT electronic sign spotted Friday morning from the northbound Gulf Freeway near the Galveston Causeway, a local investigative news team springs into action: “At last check, FOX 26 News was not able to locate any zombies on the mainland.” Keep tuned for updates.
- Hacked Sign in Galveston Reads ‘Zombies on Mainland’ [MyFox Houston, via Hair Balls]
Photo: Fox26 Viewer Amy
FLAGSHIP COLLAPSEÂ KILLS 
The 65-year-old demolition worker from Utah who was trapped after a portion of the Flagship Hotel collapsed on him yesterday died from his injuries less than an hour after he was rescued. Landry’s, the owner of the hotel, is tearing it down in order to add amusement rides to the 25th St. pier it sits on. An investigation is currently underway, and Galveston’s fire chief tells reporter Laura Elder that there’s still danger of another collapse: “Ardent, the contractor of record, could have brought in subcontractors to handle the job, and the city was in the process of determining Tuesday what company employed the injured man, city of Galveston spokeswoman Alicia Cahill said.
Crews demolished the hotel to the second floor slab. It rested, partially collapsed, at an angle with the westernmost edge appearing to touch the floor of the pier.
The injured man was in a void of concrete, [Fire chief Jeff] Smith said.
‘Entrapment time was about 20 minutes, and he had about 1,000 pounds of weight on top of him,’ Smith said.” [Galveston County Daily News; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Click2Houston
FLAGSHIP HOTEL DEMOLITION GOES A LITTLE FASTER THANÂ EXPECTED A portion of the second floor of Galveston’s Flagship Hotel collapsed this afternoon, as it was being dismantled. One worker is in critical condition after he was freed from being pinned under 1,000 pounds of debris on the north end of the structure, on the 25th St. Pier. [Click2Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Click2Houston
Yesterday a spokesperson for Landry’s told Galveston County Daily News Reporter Michael A. Smith that the company had already investigated claims that pieces of the Flagship Hotel it’s dismantling on Galveston’s 25th St. pier were finding their way into the water and “determined [them] to be false.” But what reports had the company actually looked into? By Wednesday, a website run by Galveston real-estate agent Bill Hill was featuring 7 separate accounts from witnesses claiming to have seen demolition workers or machinery knocking pieces of the building into the Gulf. And then there’s the video above, one of 3 assembled and posted Monday night by Flagship pier surfer Jeff Seinsheiner from a much longer weekend filming session. “The quality is shaky from shivers & cheap camera with no image stabilizer,” Seinsheiner explains in a note on Hill’s website. But: “I knew this would become a he said/she said without solid proof, so this should stop the nonsense.” As long as you look at it closely:
Watch for the bobcat on the first floor at 0:40…at 0:48 I see midair debris and at 0:49 I see splash. At 1:25 I see debris falling, at 1:26 splash, at 1:27 debris mid air, at 1:28 splash with more mid air debris above it.
Seinsheiner comments on the soundtrack of a later clip, which includes multiple OMGs: “By the way, we are non-denominational, but I needed a higher power for strength, as you’ll hear in the audio.” His camerawork appears to have had some effect.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: IN THE CLEAR WATERS OF THE GULF “I take my kids there every couple of weeks all summer and we are in and out of the water all day. I don’t know what it used to be like in the 80s but when we go to Stewart beach now the water is clear, we see dolphins almost every visit and fish literally swim between your toes periodically. I didn’t go down there for a couple of years after moving out here because of the horror stories I heard. They were nonsense then and they’re still nonsense now.” [Jimbo, commenting on Galveston’s Flagship Hotel Fades into the Sunset, Leaves a Few Big Chunks in the Gulf]
Onlookers are reporting that large portions of Galveston’s Flagship Hotel are finding their way into the water below the 25th St. pier. The hotel’s owner, Landry’s Restaurants, is demolishing the building to make room for an amusement-park-style entertainment complex which you might reasonably assume won’t include any under-the pier attractions. The 225-room hotel closed permanently after Hurricane Ike.
Galveston real estate agent Billy Hill has posted an anonymous eyewitness account that a front-end loader operated by the Grant Mackay Demolition Co. pushed several portions of the building into the bay, including the section of framing that disappeared in the interval between these 2 photos:
Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski now says he will waive the $10 annual permit fees the city had planned on charging 3 homeowners whose dead-tree sculptures stand in the public right-of-way. Homeowner Donna Leibbert started a small local-media firestorm late last week after she received a permit renewal form in the mail for the sculpture of a Geisha that artist Jim Phillips had carved out of an oak tree outside Leibbert’s home at 1717 Ball St. After the Hurricane Ike storm surge killed an estimated 30,000 trees on the island, artists turned almost 2 dozen of them into sculptures. But Leibbert’s Geisha is one of only 3 of the works that sits on city property.
City spokesperson Alice Cahill, who has helped to publicize the sculpture program as a tourist attraction, tells Amanda Casanova of the Galveston County Daily News that the license-to-use fee is normally required for any designed object that occupies a portion of the right-of-way. “A carved tree is treated the same as a cafe table.” Leibbert tells Casanova she was aware of the permit requirement at the time the Geisha was carved — getting approval for the sculpture required a formal application with the city’s planning commission. But she notes that the tree had stood in the same position for about 100 years, and for free.
Over the summer, Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia tracked down 22 of the tree sculptures, including Leibbert’s Geisha. Here’s her photo tour:
THE SELLOUT CROWD AT PALISADE PALMS 
A Florida real-estate developer who bought up 17 condos in the Palisade Palms towers on Galveston’s East Beach at low, low pre-construction prices 5 years ago was finally able to unload 10 of them at an auction earlier this month, taking what he describes as “a 40 percent haircut.“ Mark Shapley tells the HBJ‘s Jennifer Dawson he’s “done in Galveston,” even though he’s still stuck with 3 units in the 287-unit development. (He’d already sold 4 others). Only 50 people showed up to Shapley’s sales event — less than one-tenth of the draw of a June auction where the buildings’ original developer was able to get rid of 27 units. And Shapley sold his units for much less too: from $170,500 for a 1,044 sq.-ft. 2-bedroom to $742,500 for a 2,659-sq.-ft. penthouse. [Houston Business Journal] Photo: Palisade Palms
BIOSAFETY LEVEL 4, GALVESTON 
How’s tricks inside the air-tight $174 million Galveston National Laboratory on the UTMB campus, where space-suited investigators get to hang out with anthrax, avian influenza, bubonic plague, Ebola, typhus, West Nile, SARS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, Rift Valley fever and other bad boys? “There’s negative pressure and high air flow. It’s all built to keep stuff inside of the envelope. Animals are housed in containment devices and any individual that comes in must be decontaminated,†director of “high containment facilities” Thomas G. Ksiazek explains to reporter Amanda Casanova: “Construction on the 186,267-square-foot building started in 2005 and scientists moved in earlier this year. In the last few months, there has been only one report of possible exposure to a level 4 agent. In August, an employee stuck herself with a needle of a Central European Tick[-borne] virus while dosing mice, according to a medical branch incident report. The incident was reported to the Centers for Disease Control, and the employee was treated and monitored for three weeks but did not get sick.” [Galveston County Daily News] Photo: Nick Saum [license]
