By Bill Oakey – December 1, 2014
This morning, I thought I would check in on the Project Connect website to see what they’re up to. I clicked on the usual http://www.projectconnect.com/ and got a big surprise. I was redirected to anyjordan.com, a website that sells Nike basketball shoes inspired by Michael Jordan.
Further down in my “Project Connect Austin” Google search, I tried a Capital Metro link. That eventually led me to a new address, hidden from view beneath the listed name, projectconnect.com. The site name now appears in your browser address bar as http://www.connectcentraltexas.com
This address is so new that it has no direct link from Google. It appears that our transit officials failed to properly register the domain name for ProjectConnect.com. Or else, there is another possibility. Could it be that Project Connect is undergoing a facelift? Will the new year ring in a new name in an attempt to rehabilitate the failed pro-urban-rail organization?
Perhaps we will all wake up shortly after New Year’s Day to find that the old Project Connect has transformed itself into Connect Central Texas. After that, they may decide to rename Capital Metro. Maybe we could even help them choose a name. How about Mobility Austin? Or maybe something more cryptic and flexible, like Code ATX? Actually, that would probably be a better choice for the new name for Project Connect. With Code ATX, it would be much easier to revamp the bureaucracy every time one of their visioning processes gets rejected by the voters.
One final note. It is beyond hope and far too late for Lee Leffingwell to rehabilitate himself. He needn’t bother to change his name. In fact, if the cops were to catch him speeding on his way out of town, they should just move over and let him get on down the road.
Austin Affordability 
Hilarious Bill, thanks for the post!
So why did we give his home an historic marker? These most often seem simply to allow the rich to get richer! How can we successfully fight this?
You can look up the owner of any web site. Go to this web site and paste in any url:
http://www.whois.com/whois/
If you paste in http://www.projectconnect.com/ you find that it is owned by:
Registrant Name: Sherry Matthews Advocacy Marketing
Registrant Organization: InMotion Hosting, Inc.
Registrant Street: 6100 Center Drive Suite 1190
Registrant City: Los Angeles
Registrant State/Province: CA
Registrant Postal Code: 90045
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.8883214678
I would assume that Sherry Mathews also has the Air Jordan account.
You can do http://www.connectcentraltexas.com too. It is owned by URS Corp., a large engineering company that build toll road and train projects. This site has been online for a couple years. Before that it was a blog, but only insiders knew about it then.
The bottom line is that CapMetro hired an expensive advertising agency to “sell” the project to the public and hired a potential train builder to do the ridership and construction cost estimates. The overall project director (Keahy sp?) was on loan from HNTB Corp, another builder of toll roads and trains (and CTRMA’s General Consultant.)