We’ve been walking around Rice Univeristy recently and couldn’t help but notice literally tons of construction. It turns out that Rice is currently undergoing an explosive period of development, adding roughly one million square feet of built space to its already 3.7 million square foot campus by 2009. This is pretty impressive as is, but we were more than a little surprised (knowing that universities are businesses like any other) that Rice was recently......

::Houston NetSquared Meet Up:: The Houston Chapter of NetSquared returns tonight to kick-off another year of fascinating speakers. The Houston group recently got national props from Social Change advocate, Britt Bravo. Keep up the great work, guys! We are really excited to start the 2008 year with a wonderful guest speaker!! Kelly McCann, longtime advocate and CEO of the AIDS Foundation Houston, Inc., will be speaking about her work promoting AIDS awareness, prevention education. Kelly......

Americans for the Arts' Vice President Policy and Research, Randy Cohen, makes a trip to Houston today to discuss economic impact of the arts results from a recent Cultural Impact Study, which Mayor Bill White formally introduced at the Business of the Arts Luncheon hosted by the Greater Houston Partnership in September. You can view a copy of the study here. This morning's discussion will convey how arts organizations can utilize the findings to......

Houstonist recently kept you abreast of the “Humberto Incident”, where a low pressure system in the Gulf strengthened in less than 24 hours and slammed ashore, with sustainable wind gusts of 85 mph as a Category 1 hurricane, near High Island, causing power outages, localized flooding and wind damage. When storms give you little warning – the choice is already made for you to shelter in place. The media here is rife with preparedness information......

The big stories Thursday: two inner-Loop fires, one of which cut electricity to thousands of people and another that potentially endangered workers in a high-rise under construction. Fortunately, no one was injured in either fire, though they both caused headaches for people trying to get around the city. The first fire broke out at an electrical substation off the Southwest Freeway just before 1 p.m. yesterday, knocking out electricity to about 17,000 customers in the......

There won't be any changes anytime soon, apparently, but a big real-estate deal just went down on Montrose Boulevard: Last week, the University of St. Thomas announced it has purchased one and a half blocks along the boulevard. The land includes the shopping center with the Black Lab, Cezanne and Kraftsmen Baking — one of Houstonist's favorite shopping strips in the world — and the office buildings at 4200 Montrose and 4203 Yoakum. It's not......

In an interesting example of public-private partnership, Target Corp. has offered to help pay for security cameras to be installed around Houston to help the officer-short HPD out. It seems a little odd at first glance, but it turns out Target is no stranger to the law-enforcement game: Turns out Target has one of the most advanced crime labs in the country at its headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was initially set up to deal......

Back in June, we heard that Six Flags was planning to sell or close several of its properties, including Houston's Splashtown. And sure enough, the company is selling Splashtown and six other parks in a $312 million deal. The parks' new owner, PARC 7F-Operations Corp. of Jacksonville, Fla., will immediately sell them to CNL Income Properties, then will lease them from CNL. Whatever. The good news for all you Splashtown lovers is that the park......

Well, it looks like we still have a few months before we get to hear why spending millions of dollars in public funds on personal expenses was OK: The trial of ex-Texas Southern University President Priscilla Slade, who seems like she'll prove herself the queen of justifying outrageous actions, has been set for Aug. 10. Slade, remember, got in trouble back in February after she blabbed to one of the school's regents that she spent......

Planning to get an early start on holiday shopping? Then you'll be glad to know that the Galleria is opening early Friday — 5 a.m., to be exact. It's not that the mall hasn't opened early on "Black Friday" before — it used to open at 7, so this isn't all that big a change — but still, you have to be pretty dedicated to get out of bed in the middle of the night......

Because Shelley Sekula-Gibbs is only going to be a congresswoman for a few weeks, we suppose she feels the need to make the news as often as possible: Earlier this week, Tom DeLay's staffers walked out on Sekula-Gibbs, and now Shelley is accusing those staffers of inappropriately wiping all the office computers clean before they left. We smell a developing Capitol Hill smackdown — no, not the one between Shelley's people and DeLay's people; we're......

Looks like everyone's favorite brief-tenure congresswoman, Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, has made an impact on Washington already: According to Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, former Congressman Tom DeLay's aides quit en masse yesterday, apparently after finding the golden-haired Sekula-Gibbs a little hard to work with. The full text of the Roll Call article is only available to subscribers, but we'll summarize: As you remember, Sekula-Gibbs won the special election last week to fill former Congressman Tom......

Many may know Rice Village as a unique shopping area with a variety of stores, many different restaurants and cuisines, away from freeways and without big box-type establishments. Long time tenants are worried, though, that impending development in the area will run them out due to higher rent, which has increasingly occurred in the last few years. As reported by the Chronicle's David Kaplan:For 58 years, the quirky store has fit snugly in Rice Village,......

Looks like ex-TSU Priscilla Slade's spendy ways will continue haunting her for a while: Not only did the TSU regents fire her last month, but today, we found out that a Harris County grand jury has indicted Slade on two counts of criminally misusing university money for her own benefit. Slade is accused of spending nearly $1 million in university funds on unauthorized expenses, including more than $280,000 in furniture, landscaping and security equipment for......

Don't tell anyone we told you, but we hear this greenhouse gas emissions stuff is, like, bad for the environment. We know, we know... we couldn't believe it either. We were pondering the implications of the supposed lack of "renewable energy" when in our inbox plopped an invitation to use Kroger's new corn-based, alternative ethanol fuel. According to the press release, Kroger is the first Houston station to offer ethanol fuel, and 17 more......

City Council today approved a $15 million contract for 1,500 ultra-modern parking meters on a wireless network that will let people pay their parking fees using cell phones, credit cards and dollar bills in addition to coins. Council chose ACS State & Local Solutions of New Jersey as the vendor for the system, the first part of which should be in place within a year. Matthew Silverman, Vice President of the company's transportation services, said......

Ah, Christmas: The season of giving, of joy, of vaguely unsettling corporate cute. Today's dose comes from Amegy Bank, which calculates the return on Santa's fake portfolio of stocks. The bank's analysts assemble a group of stocks from companies in the consumer discretionary market, which Santa would theoretically have the most interest in, and they review the stocks' performance year to year. Things are looking good for Santa in 2005: His portfolio is up 23......

The temporarily former House majority leader's experience with public justice isn't going as well as he'd like, it seems: On Monday, senior state District Judge Pat Priest dismissed a charge against Tom DeLay of conspiracy to violate the state election code, but upheld a conspiracy and money-laundering charge against DeLay and two associates. Had all the charges been thrown out, DeLay would have been able to regain his post as majority leader — he was......