I’m still trying to wrap my head around the debate over whether to put a ballpark near the heart of downtown Amarillo.
It’s called the multipurpose event venue. MPEV, for short.
It’ll be up for a key decision on Nov. 3. The city will ask voters if they want the MPEV to include the ballpark. If they say “no,” the ballpark won’t be built; a “yes” vote, of course, means what it says.
I believe the ballpark is a good deal. It can be a potentially great deal if we use our imagination, employ some creativity and relearn how we can enjoy the downtown district.
I keep hearing numbers about the cost of the MPEV. It’ll be around $32 million. The city plans to issue bonds to pay for it. ItĀ plans toĀ retire those bonds with hotel-motel tax revenue and lease payments from the tenant who agrees to run the place. Bill Gilliland and Laura Street, a pair of big-hitter fundraisers, told the City Council they have received pledges totaling around $2 million from private contributors; there might be more in the wings.
Amarillo’s political/business/civic brain trust isn’t reinventing the wheel with this downtown ballpark concept. Cities all across the country — big cities and mid-sized cities, just like Amarillo — have enjoyed varying degrees of success with downtown ballparks.
There’s nothing particularly original or groundbreaking in the city’s effort to revive its downtown district.
Now, for the record, I’m not going to suggest that Amarillo can copy cities such as Oklahoma City in developing a downtown ballpark. The OKC project was paid for with a public tax levied specifically to raise money for the construction of that city’s ballpark in its Bricktown district. And I am acutely aware that OKC is a much larger city.
If we step back, though, we need to understand that no one with a lick of sense is suggesting that Amarillo’s downtown project can function on the same level as the one in OKC. It can, though, function nicely at its own level.
The MPEV as it’s been presented does represent a step forward for the city and presents a fascinating opportunity for the city to progress to some next, and perhaps largely still undefined, level.
Indeed, this project requires a leap of faith. I am prepared to take that leap.