The news about downtown Amarillo hasn’t been good of late, what with the master developer hired by the city vaporizing into thin air in the span of a 24-hour day.

But it’s not all bad.

Xcel Energy announced plans to build a $42 million office building, which is the first large-scale office construction project in more than three decades.

Good news, right?

Yes. But there’s a catch.

Xcel is going to vacate the several floors it occupies at the Chase Tower, that huge 31-story skyscraper that juts out of the downtown Amarillo skyline.

I ran into my old pal Wes Reeves recently at the coffee shop on the ground floor of the Chase Tower. He made some cheeky remark about the appearance of the new structure. Actually, it looks attractive — at least to my eyes. It’ll comprise four stories and 114,000 square feet at Seventh and Buchanan. Three floors of office space will sit atop a parking garage that will hold at least 500 vehicles.

Xcel plans to move in by the spring of 2017.

I’m glad to see the activity picking up downtown.

What about the floors that will be vacated at the Chase Tower? Developers there have done a great deal to improve the appearance of that skyscraper. It’s a bustling hub of activity now. However, West Texas A&M University is moving its Amarillo campus operation of out there eventually to a new site where the Commerce Building sits.

The exit of WT and now Xcel will vacate about a dozen floors of the Chase building.

That’s an unacceptable level of darkness in a building that towers so tall over our city.