Crack That Shell

For the sand castle kicker in all of us, here’s your best chance to destroy an office building without being branded a terrorist.

At the ass end of the Nineties high-tech explosion, Intel began building a 10-story chip design center after extracting $10.6 million in incentives from Austin taxpayers. Two years later, the company halted construction and backed out of the deal, leaving an unfinished husk of concrete for all of us to enjoy. After years of negotiations, the much-loathed “Intel shell” at Fifth and Nueces will finally be brought down this fall to make way for Austin’s new federal courthouse.

The Austin Parks Foundation is now selling $10 raffle tickets to destroy the Intel building. One lucky winner gets to set off the implosion, wrecking ball, jackhammer or other means of destruction that wipes the Intel shell out of existence forever.

The winner will also be rewarded with the knowledge that the raffle helps fund improvements to nearby Republic Square Park, but that pales in comparison to the genital-engorging thanatotic fervor of demolishing a hideous symbol of corporate folly.