Category Archives: business news

business news, local news

Downtown’s future takes a hit

downtownamarilloinc1

They’re messing with an agency with a mission to improve downtown Amarillo’s fortunes.

Just the other day came word that interim Amarillo City Manager Terry Childers is considering moving some of Downtown Amarillo Inc.’s economic development duties to an office in City Hall.

My question then was: Why mess with success, given all the good that has happened downtown while DAI has been on task?

Now comes the latest boulder to get tossed into the machinery. DAI executive director Melissa Dailey has resigned.

I’ll admit that I’m not privy to Dailey’s reasoning, but the timing of her resignation — which the DAI board accepted unanimously — suggests some relationship to what the city manager is considering.

DAI board president John Lutz said that downtown’s future is “bigger than one person.” Fair enough.

Still, this isn’t good news for the city.

I’m not entirely clear about all the issues surrounding Dailey’s tenure at DAI. I’d heard some of the grumbling from those who blame Dailey directly for the Wallace Bajjali fiasco. Yes, Wallace Bajjali turned out to be all hat and no cattle with regard to downtown revival efforts here, but the breakup of the master development company didn’t bankrupt the city.

The two company principals had a huge falling out. One of them, David Wallace, has filed for personal bankruptcy. So they’re gone. Good riddance.

Has downtown’s movement slowed? No. Does DAI deserve to be castigated over the work that’s been done so far? Hardly. It has done well — and so has Dailey. The proof can be seen throughout the downtown district.

However, the non-profit agency now appears to be a target. My strong hunch is that Dailey didn’t want to become collateral damage if the city decides to revamp DAI’s mission.

The city is messing with success.

 

business news, local news

View from atop the tower is quite revealing

MPEV

Amarillo’s downtown district boasts a single structure that you could call a “skyscraper.”

The Chase Tower looms 31 stories over the city and from that top floor one can get a breathtaking view of our spacious landscape.

When you look east from that tower, though, you don’t have to cast your gaze toward the horizon to see the sure sign of change that’s occurring.

Look down just a bit at the Civic Center, City Hall, at the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts and you see some serious work being done.

You’ll see two vacant lots that have been cleared out. Look a bit south of those two lots and you’ll notice a new structure rising up from the dirt; that would be the new Southwestern Public Service office complex.

The two lots? They’ll belong to the Embassy Suites convention hotel and a parking garage. Site preparation has begun on those two sites.

Oh, and just a bit farther east, right across the street from City Hall, you’ll see another parcel of property. At the moment it contains some vacated buildings once occupied by the Coca-Cola Distribution Center; the Coke operation has moved to a business park and soon the buildings left behind will be razed to make room for “the ballpark.”

I have the privilege of looking at all that change each week when I attend the regular Rotary Club of Amarillo meetings at the Amarillo Club atop the Chase Tower.

I do enjoy seeing the change from week to week that’s occurring on the sites. The SPS building seems just a tiny bit closer to completion; the convention hotel site and the parking garage lot are getting prepped to a little greater degree.

To be candid, I remain a bit surprised that so much work has been done on these downtown improvement projects. After the tumult associated with this past spring’s municipal election that brought us three new City Council members who didn’t seem as dedicated to the project as their predecessors, I feared the worst. I feared that the work would come to a halt.

It hasn’t.

The multipurpose event venue appears to be inching toward its start; the downtown convention hotel and the parking garage are about to take some form.

Amarillo’s downtown business district is going to reap the benefit of the change that’s coming its way.

As the center of the city improves, you can take my word for it: So will the rest of Amarillo.

Yes, the view from the top floor of the Chase Tower looks mighty grand.

 

business news

Fuel price goes down; fares stay up

boom

This might be one of the more unsurprising back stories of the recent news regarding the falling price of fossil fuel.

Air fares — which shot up right along with the price of those fuels back in 2010 and 2011 — are staying right where they’ve been, even while the price of fuel falls through the floor.

Who knew?

Profitability matters.

I get that air carriers want to preserve their profit margins. But can’t they do so while providing a little bit of relief for those who want to fly somewhere?

It’s a bit like the gasoline dealers who fairly routinely jack the price of fuel up a dime, 12 or 15 cents at one pop when the price of oil ticks up — as it did near the end of last week; I’m waiting now for the gasoline price to reflect the increase.

When the prices of oil comes down, the dealers seek to maintain their own profit margins for as long as they can by inching the price of gas downward a penny or maybe two at a time.

I understand basic economics as much as the next guy. It just is a bit frustrating — as a potential consumer — to wait for air fares to decline at the same pace that they escalate.

 

business news, national news, Uncategorized

Landline = lifeline . . . still

1 Comment

Modern black business office telephone with the receiver off the hook isolated on a white background

Another friend of mine has announced he’s cutting himself loose.

He’s my age. A peer. A former colleague. A friend to this day.

He and his wife are cutting the cord, so to speak, by ending their landline telephone service. I guess they’re going to be a cell phone family.

My wife and I have wrestled with that issue for nearly as long as we’ve owned cell phones, which isn’t as long as most of our peers. We’ve waffled and wavered. We just cannot cut the cord ourselves.

Our sons are cell phone-only telecommunications consumers. They like it that way. They take their phones with them wherever they happen to be.

Us? We remain tethered to the landline.

We’ve had them our entire lives. They have become part of who we are, I reckon.

Do we intend to stay tied to the home phone, the landline for the rest of our lives? I doubt it, strongly.

I’ve noted on this blog about our upcoming retirement plans. They include significant amounts of time on the road. We’ll, quite obviously, be spending less time “at home” and more time in our “home away from home,” our fifth wheel.

Thus, it makes little sense for us to keep the landline. Correct?

I get it. My wife gets it. Our sons no doubt snicker at us for being so, oh, wedded to the old way.

Too bad.

For now and for the foreseeable future, we’re going to stay hooked to the landline. I cannot explain precisely why we want it that way. We just do.

When the moment presents itself, when it’s time to cut ourselves free of the telephone line, we’ll know it when it arrives.

 

 

 

 

business news, local news

DAI getting support from AMM

downtownamarilloinc1

Downtown Amarillo Inc.’s future might be getting a bit murky.

Why? Well, that’s what a political organization comprising some young Amarillo residents wants to know.

Amarillo Millennial Movement has posted a video proclaiming the successes that have occurred in downtown Amarillo since the founding of DAI.

See the video here.

The Amarillo City Council is considering some major reconfiguration of downtown’s redevelopment strategy. DAI might not figure nearly as prominently in future economic redevelopment efforts.

The council might move some of the economic redevelopment efforts directly into City Hall, which would reduce significantly DAI’s role in future efforts.

AMM’s video cites a number of successful projects that have begun or been completed while DAI — a non-profit agency — has been on the job.

The Fisk Building revival? New lofts along 10th Avenue? Park development near the Potter County Courthouse? New commercial development? Street improvements? Ground being broken for the new Embassy Suites Hotel and for the new parking garage?

AMM wants DAI to stay on the job and is using social media to lobby the City Council to keep the agency as a viable economic development tool.

I happen to agree with AMM’s request.

I am acutely aware of the criticism that DAI has drawn from some quarters here and there in the city. But as I look at how downtown has progressed over the past few years, I keep wondering: Precisely why is this agency being singled out?

City Councilman Brian Eades remains a strong proponent for DAI. He said the other day that DAI “has been more responsible for the success we’ve had than any other entity.” He added that DAI comprises “experts at this and they’ve done a good job.”

So, why the rush to change what appears to be a successful formula for guiding the city toward a brighter future?

 

business news, local news

DAI keeps its public money after all . . . good!

downtownamarilloinc1

The facts . . . just the facts.

The fictional police detective Joe Friday would say that on the TV show “Dragnet” a long time ago when questioning principals involved in a criminal activity.  The admonition applies, it seems, to local media seeking to report on the status of a non-profit organization charged with shepherding downtown Amarillo’s revival.

Downtown Amarillo Inc., it was reported, was losing its revenue source from the city. Not so, DAI officials have said. Ditto, according to Mayor Paul Harpole.

A TV station reported that the city had decided to “defund” DAI. Turns out the story was a bit off the mark.

DAI failed to meet a deadline set by the City Council to come up with strategic action plan on downtown revitalization efforts.

The council, though, did not pull the plug on DAI. It extended its deadline, giving the organization a little more time to finish its work on the strategic plan. Harpole said DAI is going to present its plans at the next City Council meeting.

DAI has been the subject of a fair amount of criticism from those who dislike the effort being put into reviving downtown Amarillo. I happen to think DAI provides a service of great value to the city and want it to continue operating at full speed.

From my vantage point, it appears that the City Council and DAI need to become more familiar with each other’s move. Think of them as a dance team learning how to move in sync.

There might be more hiccups along the way as DAI and the City Council — with its three new members still feeling their way through a sometimes-complicated process — move forward . . . hopefully together.

My admonition to DAI would be to ensure that meets all the deadlines required in the future by the bosses at City Hall.

Meanwhile, it’s incumbent on the media — given the occasionally overheated rhetoric that has punctuated the recent community discussion on downtown’s future — to ensure it gets it right the first time.

 

 

business news, local news, State news

Texas faces new oil bust, but might fare better this time

boom

Texas is heading for a bad-news, good-news economic cycle.

The bad? The price of oil is going to continue falling, making it difficult for producers to keep drilling for the crude.

The good? Texas is better positioned this time to handle this bust compared to its history with these crazy economic cycles.

CNBC.com reports: “In some ways, the Texas oil industry today is a victim of its own success. After a steady output decline in the 1980s and ’90s, U.S. oil producers staged a remarkable and widely unexpected revival over the past decade by deploying new seismic and drilling technologies. By coaxing drill bits to move horizontally, and breaking up ‘tight’ oil formations with fracking, millions of barrels of oil have been produced from decades-old fields once left for dead.”

So, the world now has a glut of oil, thanks to tremendous increases in production here at home.

Texas is going bust, sort of.

I arrived in Texas in the spring of 1984 to begin work at a newspaper in the Golden Triangle, one of the world’s premier petrochemical producing regions. Life was good in Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange.

Then the bottom fell out. Two years later, the price of oil had collapsed. Refineries and petrochemical plants laid off thousands of employees. Some operations shut down. The jobless rate zoomed to nearly 20 percent in that part of the state.

Life, quite suddenly, became not so good.

The mantra then became “economic diversification.” Texas had to branch out, seek other economic revenue streams to take the pressure off the oil and petrochemical industry.

So, the state did that. It invested in high-tech, medical research, automobile manufacturing and a lot of other smaller initiatives.

That 1980s oil bust hammered the Texas Panhandle, too, where I would move in early 1995.

And, yes, in this part of the state we’re faring relatively well. We, too, have diversified. We aren’t nearly as dependent on oil and natural gas as we’d been since, oh, the Spindletop gusher came in at the turn of the 20th century.

Has the state been hit hard by the steep drop in oil prices? Yes. CNBC reports that the gross state product has been reduced to near zero as the year draws to a close. State government is looking at a serious revenue shortfall that the Legislature will have to deal with when it convenes in January 2017.

There isn’t the sense of panic, though, that we felt in the 1980s.

Why? Much of the state has heeded the diversification warnings our leaders sounded the last time the bottom fell out.

 

business news, local news

Here’s how you shop for Christmas gifts

maxresdefault

I am considering writing a shoppers’ manual.

It’ll be from a guy’s perspective. I believe I have mastered the technique for Christmas shopping. Today, I took it to a new level of brutal efficiency.

Here’s how it went … and please forgive me if I sound a bit boastful.

  • I left the house this morning at 8:30. I headed for a major department store. I had one thing in mind to purchase for my wife at this store. I found it, took it off the rack and then sauntered toward another part of the store. I found another item and took that off the rack.
  • I then hot-footed it to another pre-planned location within the store. Grabbed the item. Then I paid for all of it. I left the store.
  • I drove across the street to the regional mall: Westgate Mall.
  • I marched through the mall entrance and then went to a store specializing in West Texas apparel. I then found another pre-determined item. I bought it.
  • Then I wandered into a health store and found some cool things to put in her stocking. I bought them, too.

There you have it, fellas. I was done in less than two hours.

Start to finish. Could we ever persuade our wives and/or girlfriends to do it this way? You may stop laughing now.

What’s my secret?

Write a list. Stick to it. Head to the retail outlets early in the day before most of your community has had its final cup of coffee in the morning.

Be disciplined while you’re looking. Stay focused. Consider it to be akin to a surgical strike.

Does it sound like a tried-and-true men’s shopping formula for success during this wonderful holiday season? I think so.

Hey, I got all this done with four whole days to go before Santa arrives.

 

business news, local news, State news

Welcome back, Blue Bell … I guess

BB

Blue Bell Ice Cream is returning to freezer shelves in Amarillo.

With that, our collective souls will be healed. We’ll be returned to some sort of Promised Land of delectability.

It’s all a puzzle to me.

Blue Bell Creamery yanked the ice cream from the store freezers when the listeria virus was discovered. Understandably, the folks at Blue Bell didn’t want to sicken millions of us.

It was here. Then it was gone. If memory serves, the feeling all over Texas was one of disbelief over the apparent demise of this Lone Star State favorite concoction.

I now will stipulate — as if you didn’t know it already — I ain’t of Texas. My family and I have lived here for nearly 32 years. We call Texas home and we have forged a great life in this wonderful state.

I tweeted something earlier today about Blue Bell coming back and my admitted lack of understanding of why this is such a big deal. A friend — a native Texan — reminded me that Texans hold some traditions near to their hearts and “Blue Bell is one of them.”

OK, I get it.

It must be that the creamery where it’s made is in Brenham, where every spring the bluebonnets bloom, filling Texans with pride in the beauty of state’s official flower.

Is the confection, though, that good? Is it the kind of treat that one recognize over all others? Diehard Texans, I suppose, would say it is. And I actually did proclaim my love for the stuff in an Aug. 5 blog post. But since then I have come to realize something during the months it was gone from our Amarillo stores: I didn’t miss it as much as I thought I might.

Don’t get me wrong. It does taste good. But I don’t think it rises to the level of, say, a certain barbecue sauce I discovered in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Dreamland Drive-In sauce is, indeed, the best BBQ sauce ever created. But … I digress.

This fascination with Blue Bell reminds me vaguely of a certain love affair some of us in high school back in Oregon had with Coors beer. We couldn’t purchase it in Oregon; but you could get it way over yonder in neighboring Idaho.

So-o-o-o … when one of our friends went to visit his aunt and uncle in Payette or Nampa, we’d fork over a few bucks and he’d bring back some Coors for us to swill — illegally, of course.

Looking back on it now? The brew was overrated.

Blue Bell Ice Cream is about to make a triumphant return. I’m glad, not so much for myself, but for my fellow Texans who’ve been yearning for it. You are whole again.

 

 

business news

OPEC sends a Christmas gift

gas

Bloomberg News reports that the price of gasoline is about to plummet.

Good news, yes? Sure, if you’re a motorist who dislikes pouring money into his motor vehicle fuel tank. I’m one of those.

If you’re a government official who serves a state — such as, say, Texas — that depends on oil revenue to fund government services, well, the news isn’t so great.

My self-interest makes me happy about the news.

OPEC is refusing to cut production of oil. U.S. supplies are at an all-time high. We’re driving more fuel-efficient vehicles these days. We’re developing alternative energy sources. Hey, it’s all good.

I don’t like paying nearly four bucks a gallon for fuel, which is what we were shelling out two years ago. Today, the price of gasoline in Amarillo is around $1.62 per gallon.

It’s interesting, too, to note the silence from Barack Obama’s critics now that fuel prices are heading south. When they were skyrocketing in the other direction about midway through the president’s first term, the critics were blaming him personally for the hardship. These days, he’s getting none of the love.

Does he deserve it? Aww, probably not.

Neither did he deserve the blame when the prices were going the other way.

Thanks, OPEC, for the holiday gift.

Merry Christmas to you, too, OPEC.