Amarillo’s downtown revival might be heading for the cliff.
Here’s what I’ve heard just in recent days.
The city is going to fill the final spot on the City Council when it conducts a runoff election for Place 4 between Mark Nair and Steve Rogers. Nair, who finished first in the May 9 election, is considered the favorite. He’s a bright young man, who happens to believe voters should decide whether to build the multipurpose event venue planned for construction on a now-vacant lot just south of City Hall.
Two other brand new council members, Elisha Demerson and Randy Burkett, have taken office. They are sounding as if they, too, want to put the issue to a vote.
If Nair defeats Steve Rogers in the runoff, that means the council will have three members who want voters to decide this issue; the council comprises five members, so … there’s your majority.
The city says the MPEV will be paid with hotel-motel tax revenue. Why that revenue stream? Because the city also is planning to construct a convention hotel, which also will be paid with private investment money — and which will generate more tax revenue, and a parking garage, also financed with private investors.
The so-called “catalyst” project is the MPEV, according to City Hall officials. If the MPEV isn’t built, then nothing else happens. The developer who wants to build the Embassy Suites hotel complex will back out; the parking garage doesn’t get built.
The city is then left with, well, nothing!
Years of planning, cajoling, discussion, debate and negotiation will be flushed down the proverbial drain.
Amarillo, then, as a leading City Hall official told me this morning, will become as the cantankerous oilman T. Boone Pickens once described it: A glorified truck stop.
I happen to remain committed to the concept that’s been developed by planners, city leaders and local businessmen and women. The MPEV, or “ballpark,” will tie itself to the hotel, which will be linked with the parking garage.
But some folks somehow think the MPEV is a lemon. They believe the city needs to invest first in improvements to the Civic Center.
Do they actually understand that Civic Center improvements — which would cost more than the three-pronged construction project already on the table — is going to require more public money, meaning more tax revenue, meaning more money out of their pocket?
City officials have told me they plan to improve the Civic Center eventually. They remain confident in the results that will come from the rest of the projects that already have been set in motion.
Let’s also understand one final point.
A citywide referendum would be a non-binding vote. The city isn’t required by law to abide by the results of such an election, any more than it was bound by the 1996 vote to sell Northwest Texas Hospital to a private health care provider. The city did the right thing, though, in ratifying the results of that hospital sale vote. To do otherwise would been to commit political suicide.
Such would be the case if an MPEV referendum went badly for the city and the council ignored the voters’ wishes.
There had better be some serious soul-searching as the city prepares to take the next big steps.
Either it revives downtown, or it doesn’t.
If it’s the latter, well, let us just kiss the future goodbye.