Installed yesterday morning on the 3rd floor of the city’s new permit HQ and Green Resource Center at 1002 Washington Ave., which features dozens of other artworks: a text wall by Mary Margaret Hansen, the project’s lead artist. “Last spring, I filled entire yellow legal pads with transcriptions of real conversations, then got it all on a lengthy word document and finally edited it to phrases and expressions that best exemplify what happens when the city takes a look at a set of plans,” she writes. “Too wet! Mud in the beams. Call back when it dries up.” Also: “What about the fees?” and “I have lingering doubts.” Your favorites are all here. Or at least some of them:
City council today approved the sale of Houston’s code enforcement building at 3300 Main St. to the Midtown Redevelopment Authority, for $5 million. The 57,899 sq.-ft. structure and parking garage on a full Midtown block, which also houses the city’s Green Building Resource Center, received several sealed private-sector bids before the February 17th due date. Last week, Mayor Parker declared that the Midtown TIRZ had submitted the high bid, but 2 council members disputed that, claiming the group hadn’t submitted a bid for the property at all. (One of them, Anne Clutterbuck, was the lone dissenter in today’s vote.) Chronicle reporter Chris Moran hasn’t been able to get a straight answer yet, but interprets a staff report to mean that the TIRZ did not submit a formal bid — the city simply determined a purchase from the government entity would be “the most advantageous.” What’s all the fuss? “The city built the sale of 3300 Main into its FY 11 budget, and it is now depending on that sale to help it bridge a $21 million projected budget shortfall for the fiscal year that ends June 30. 
