Photo by gunnyrat on flickr The oil that spilled onto Sixth Street and into Waller Creek last week came from a 100-year-old underground tank. Jennifer Kim on the Northcross WalMart: "It's going to be a freaking disaster." Celebration Church in Georgetown has its own Starbucks and 5,000 attendees. Sayeth the pastor: "You can't do church without money." Wachovia Bank on Mesa Drive robbed this morning. Statewide public meetings on the Trans-Texas Corridor to begin tomorrow.......

Photo by Miss Barbara on flickr After all that this morning, no one was found inside McBride's after the police got in. Over the weekend, a Hays County deputy found 730 pounds of marijuana when he pulled over a Suburban in Buda. LaBare trying to get permits to set up shop off of Braker and IH35; the neighbors aren't too excited about it. Cops on the lookout for woman (and two accomplices) who robbed a......

A former lawyer at the Texas Secretary of State's Office sues after being fired in 2005 for making "embarrassing" statements about Karl Rove's Texas residency status In yet another sign of Austin's ongoing transformation, the Statesman debuts its own gossip/society column, helmed by entertainment editor Michael Barnes Things in Crawford, Texas quiet down now that no one cares to visit (or protest) TxDOT is rolling out a fancy new $9 million ad campaign to......

The current battle over the Trans Texas Corridor (“TTC”) – essentially a fight between rural Texas, Governor Rick Perry’s office and the urban developers that Perry is backing – appears to be approaching its endgame this week. Certainly this story has all the obvious implications for the State’s infrastructure, but it could also have other consequences that may be less obvious: It could change how millions of Texans vote. Here’s the present story in a......

So much urban development is happening in Austin, we barely have time to hit the highlights. We'd love to offer more fulsome coverage, but we need help. If you are interested in writing urban development posts for Austinist.com, email urban(@)austinist.com (remove the parenthesis) with a few sample posts and some information about yourself and why you want to write for Austinist.com. Villa Muse Development: Villa Muse (shown right) is a proposed 681-acre mixed-used development......

Highways need an ad campaign like sexy needed to be brought back. Nonetheless, TxDOT has decided to spend $1.8 million on billboards, "bus-wraps" (we love that -- the only thing better would be advertising on the inside of the bus), print ads, radio spots and direct-mail, all in the hopes of encouraging use of the newly constructed Loop 1 extension, Texas 45 North and Texas 130. These highways are already further sprawlifying Austin. Taurus......

Democratic goobernatorial candidate Chris Bell is demanding that Carole Keeton Cougar Rylander Strayhorn return $29,500 she received from members of the Zachry Family, which owns Zachry Construction Corp. Zachry Construction is involved in a partnership to develop the first phase of the Trans-Texas Corridor, which includes 4,000-plus miles of tollways. What bothers Bell is that this is the same project that Strayhorn has spoken out against publicly. In other Grandma Cougar news: Kinky wants......

The current Trans-Texas Corridor superhighway plan for Texas, if allowed to proceed, will forever change the landscape of the state. There are many people unhappy about this proposed project. Yet what many either don’t know or have long forgotten is that a much cheaper & efficient option for easy passenger travel between Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio once existed. Yet, thanks to a well-known Texas airline company, that plan disappeared. In short, the......