New Courthouse? Don't Hold Your Breath.

The Statesman reports that the Intel shell could be demolished as early as next spring. Unfortunately, the ridiculous slew of federal regulations and our dismal national budget require that the new federal courthouse that is to be put in its place wait its place in a national queue:

Curtis also hopes to unveil a scale model and computer renderings of the new courthouse in February, though final design work won't be completed until the first quarter of 2007, when Austin's courthouse will enter the appropriations merry-go-round for the 2008 fiscal year. The uncertainty is fueled by the court system's self-imposed building moratorium, set to expire in September, that halted work on 42 projects. Design work was allowed to continue on 11 courthouses, including Austin's, but no promises were made about when construction money would be found. The stoppage meant the end of five-year building plans that, through annual updates, gave cities a measure of confidence about construction schedules. Then the moratorium was announced last year, 14 courthouse projects were rated a higher priority than Austin's. Three were recently added to the court system's 2007 wish list, removing them from Austin's path, but two lower-rated projects also were bumped head of Austin.

The earliest that a new structure might go up is 2008 or 2009, but this largely depends on the lobbying strength of the Texas congressional delegation. In the meantime, they're trying to figure out a way to re-use the Intel shell structure:

"Seeing that it's such a clean structure, it's ideal for recycling rather than demolition and just getting rid of it," said Roger Curtis, project manager for the U.S. General Services Administration in Fort Worth. "But I have not even gotten information on . . . what it'll take and how much it'll cost."