Maybe it’s just me — and perhaps I’ll include my wife, as she’s noticed the same thing — but downtown Amarillo is looking quite a bit more pulled together than it did when we first arrived way back when.

I don’t get downtown as often as I used to. I average about one visit per week. But I’m noticing something as I make the drive into the central business district.

I’m noticing fewer gutted-out building hulks; fewer vacant lots strewn with trash and weeds; and a decidedly more appealing appearances to existing structures, blocks and street corners.

I usually enter downtown around noon from the Canyon Expressway. I drive to Eighth Avenue and then turn left. I have noticed that the corner of Eighth and Taylor Street is cleaned up. I look toward the Marriott Hotel and see considerable pedestrian traffic along Polk Street. Eating establishments are quite busy with lunchtime activity. I look south and continue to marvel at the Santa Fe Building, which Potter County purchased for a song and turned it into a fabulous office complex.

To what should we credit all this? It’s not yet clear. Of course, I am aware of all the Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone activity and pledges to start busting up pavement to build a ballpark, a parking garage and a hotel downtown. It hasn’t happened yet. The old Coca-Cola distribution center will be moving out to make room for some of that activity.

The Potter County Courthouse Square is complete and the city has installed those fancy curbs along the corners that jut into the streets. I haven’t heard of a rash of accidents that some critics claimed would occur when the city installed those new curb designs.

I’ve heard about investment firms buying up commercial property, vowing to turn them into commercial successes.

Is it all rosy and bright downtown? Well, not really. The city still has that hideous Barfield Building at the corner of Sixth and Polk. The developer who owns that building cannot secure the money to do anything with it. It sits there, languishing and rotting more by the week. I will choose to look away from that eyesore whenever I travel past that corner.

But all in all, the years since our arrival in Amarillo in early 1995 have been good for the city’s downtown business district.

I’ve said all along that virtually all cities’ success can be measured by how it treats its downtown district. Amarillo is moving slowly — and I hope inexorably — toward that success.