If you were planning to be in Council chambers on the July 8 for the high-impact hearing on the Eighth Avenue drilling site, your evening just opened up. A source close to the process confirmed this evening that Chesapeake contacted the city and asked for a postponement.

What this means remains unclear right now, however this doesn’t seem to be a sudden Road to Damascus moment on the part of Chesapeake, this is just RealPolitik. The word going around was that the votes weren’t there for Chesapeake, and we aren’t talking a 5-4 vote. It was going to be a clear majority, if not a unanimous vote, against the permit.

This issue has gotten too hot for the Council and no one, not even Chesapeake’s BFF Mayor Mikey, was willing to stick his neck out when Council chambers would be overflowing with hundred of pissed off residents of Ryan Place, Fairmount, Mistletoe Heights and Berkeley neighborhoods. They were already setting up shuttle bus service to take people to the meeting — not a good sign for Chesapeake.

However, what will happen next is complicated and convoluted.
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Back in February when Mayor Mike Moncrief kicked off the charade that is the Gas Drilling Task Force, he said it was all about quality of life.

In fact, Mikey was so concerned about quality of life, that he didn’t even bother to show up at last night’s public meeting to hear what his constituents actually had to say. I assume he was hanging out with his friends from Chesapeake — Aubrey McClendon and Julie Wilson — as they flipped the switch on the lights over at Castle Grayskull, formerly Pier 1 Tower. That’s what the more than 200 people in the crowd were talking about anyway.

Yep, quality of life was so important that only two members of the City Council even bothered to show up — Joel Burns and Carter Burdette. But unlike Carter, at least Joel bothered to stay until the end, even after the A/C was turned off.
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Someone whispered this in a Panther’s Ear last week: “Three days since I saw the Tommy Lee Jones Friends of the Shale ads for the first time and not a single comment from W&C on this nauseating display? You guys are letting me down.”

Yeah, we kind of sucked a little last week. We really are sorry about that. We’re getting our act together this week. Really. Less sucking, more writing.

But before you read further, please consider your own safety. If you continue reading this post after the jump, Tommy Lee Jones will come to your house and kill you. And your family. And probably your dog. He’s angry. He’s serious. He has a gun.

So for the love of God, read no further.
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Big real estate news - Chesapeake Energy has purchased the Pier 1 Tower.

“The purchase of this architecturally significant building in downtown Fort Worth clearly demonstrates Chesapeake’s commitment to a very long-term presence in the Barnett Shale play,” said Julie H. Wilson, Chesapeake’s vice president of corporate development, in a written statement. “This building will allow us to provide much needed office space to support our rapidly growing Barnett Shale activities and will give our employees the space, amenities and resources they need to perform their jobs at the highest level.”

Pier 1 will continue to occupy about 250,000 square feet and plans to enter into a seven year lease agreement at closing. The anticipated transaction closing is no later than June 30. The $104 million purchase price was disclosed in a Pier 1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Interesting. I wonder if they’ll be turning the lights back on? There will surely be much discussion amongst us Fort Worth architecture geeks about this, not to mention the gas drilling angle.

Tip of the hat to Crystal Forester at the Fort Worth Business Press.

UPDATE: Chesapeake is making some fairly obvious hints that the building’s signature crown lighting will be coming back.

Most people have a love-hate relationship with their local paper — they love to hate it.

Consider this — the latest flashpoint in the culture wars between Dallas and Fort Worth has become, unbelievably, DaFoWoShow, the three minutes of snarkiness brought to you each Thursday by the Startlegram.

OK, that’s massive overstatement. However, there is a difference of opinion between the left and right sides of the Metromess on this’n. I am previously on record as saying I like it, which prompted one S-T editor who shall remain unnamed to say, “I’ve lost all respect for you. How could you think that was funny?”

Well, to paraphrase John Belushi, that’s your bad. You fucked up. You trusted me.

But this person wasn’t the only soul in the Fort with a low opinion. Anthony Mariani at FWWeekly also weighed in with his instant disapproval of the show’s “really lame jokes, or jokes for the blissfully suburban fortysomething-plus set, or for people who’ve only recently become acquainted with the concept of sarcasm.”

But a funny thing happens when you go east of Arlington and HEB where the S-T ain’t so local and there ain’t so much hate for Tarrant’s daily — the show got funnier as it went through the tubes of teh Internets. Maybe that’s why the Frontburner review is far more kind.

Former Startlegramer and current D Magaziner Eric Celeste called DaFoWo “more proof that the S-T gets it. … It’s not riotous, but it’s a clever and amusing webcast, and the use of random video clips is perfect, especially the [David Hasselhoff] vid in the second one we watched. Well done, folks. Should just get better with age.”

Take that D(a)MN! So, is DaFoWo too Dallas? Is it too not funny? Are some people in the Fort just wearing their underwear too tight? Whatcha think? [Read more]

Lots of gas drilling items on the agenda at Council yesterday:

If your kid goes to Lily B. Clayton Elementary, would you want a pipeline with, er, wastewater, within a softball throw of the school playground?

Like white smoke billowing from the chimney of Sistine Chapel signaling a new pope, word finally came from the second floor at City Hall last Tuesday — the city gas ordinance task force will be reconstituted.

Based on the Star-Telegram story, it looks like all of the key issues are on the table: pipelines, restrictions on drilling in central city neighborhoods, moving gas drilling away from the Trinity River, the location of pipeline compressor stations and — the big one — injection wells.

When Mayor Moncrief called saltwater disposal “the elephant in the room,” he might have made the understatement of the year.

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