Tag Archives: downtown Amarillo

local news, Sports news

Waiting for baseball season to begin … already?

I am likely not offering a big-time scoop but I am getting some buzz from up yonder in Amarillo that Texas Panhandle baseball fans are counting down the days for Season No. 2 of the Amarillo Sod Poodles.

Hey, why not?

The Dallas Cowboys didn’t make it to the pro football playoffs; the Houston Texans blew a big lead against the Kansas City Chiefs over the weekend, so they’re out. The Dallas Mavericks are off to a good pro basketball start. The Dallas Stars? Beats me.

Baseball is on the minds of a lot of sports fans in the Panhandle. The Sod Poodles whet their appetites by doing something quite remarkable in their initial season. They won the Texas League championship in a five-game thriller against the defending league champs, the Tulsa Drillers.

Hodgetown, where the Sod Poodles play their home games, is mostly dark these days. That’s my guess anyway.

We’re halfway through January already. The season starts in April. The Sod Poodles will have some sort of ceremony on opening day to celebrate their Texas League title. They’ll hear speeches from the mayor, maybe a county judge or two. The fans will cheer.

Someone will toss out the ceremonial first pitch.

They’ll start playing hardball at Hodgetown, which more than likely will be chock full of fans.

So the next season is right around the corner. Isn’t that correct?

That’s what winning does. It makes fans anxious for the next season to begin.

local news

Amarillo Matters has come clean; good deal!

A political action organization formed in 2016 to promote Amarillo’s economic and political future has made a positive change in the way it presents itself.

Amarillo Matters has developed a new website. It continues to speak to its mission, its goals and its strategy. The site also has the name of the principals who are involved in the decisions that Amarillo Matters makes.

It’s the disclosure of the names that I find worthy of commendation.

I wrote on this blog more than a year ago that Amarillo Matters needed to reveal its individual and collective identities to the public. There had been some reluctance to doing so, according to one source close to the group, because of a fear of backlash by those in the community who opposed the agenda that Amarillo Matters is promoting.

Well, I guess those fears have been put aside.

Amarillo Matters has an “About Us” page on its site. It states the “focus” of the organization.

Amarillo Matters will primarily focus on elected positions in which the elected official has a direct governance responsibility to the citizens of Amarillo and the surrounding area. We will also focus on issues that have a positive benefit on Amarillo and the surrounding area. We believe the word benefit has many definitions. They include economic development projects, major investments in our local workforce and students, along with quality of life projects.

That all sounds benign. It’s a positive outlook. A positive outreach. There’s nothing nefarious. The board of directors contains the names of several individuals I know personally; I know a couple of them quite well. I know of the rest of them. They are all successful. Those I know are fine individuals who I believe have the community’s best interests at heart.

Check out the group’s mission statement here.

It is important that Amarillo Matters reveal its identity to the community it seeks to lead. Granted, this is not an elected body. It comprises individuals who seek to exert some influence in what the electorate decides. There’s nothing wrong in any group wanting to do what Amarillo Matters has pledged to do.

Amarillo, though, is no different from any community in the midst of change. Some residents endorse the direction where the community is heading; others oppose it. Everyone has a right to know who is seeking to call the shots.

Amarillo Matters now has revealed who is doing so within its board room. To which I say: Well played.

business news, local news

Businesses will come and they will go

I am sensing a touch of community and social media hand-wringing over the closure of a jazz club that opened in downtown Amarillo a couple of years ago.

The Esquire Jazz Club opened a couple of years ago with considerable fanfare as the city’s downtown revival picked up an impressive head of steam. Its owner is Amarillo lawyer and jazz musician Pat Swindell, whose band played at the club regularly, as I understand it.

OK, the club didn’t make it. It is shuttered. Is this the end of downtown’s revival? Does this mean the efforts to transform Polk Street into a new form of entertainment district won’t work?

Please. Let’s get real.

Businesses come and go. It would have been great to see the Esquire Jazz Club flourish, providing a joyful entertainment option for residents of Amarillo.

However, I feel the need to remind the worriers that there remains a virtually endless supply of businesses opportunities for the city to explore. Indeed, the downtown progress to date has been impressive.

The city has welcomed the opening of a new ballpark that officials hope will be host to many events other than AA minor-league baseball; new hotels are coming on line to join the Embassy Suites complex across the street from City Hall; Polk Street has welcomed new commercial businesses; Potter County’s Courthouse has been renovated and restored; West Texas A&M University has opened a downtown campus.

Will there be hiccups along the way? Yes! Of course!

I am not going to worry about Amarillo’s economic future. It still looks bright to my eyes.

local news

Longtime friend has earned this high honor

A woman with whom I worked for several years in the Texas Panhandle is about to get a whole lot of pats on the back and expressions of gratitude for the work she has done on behalf of her hometown.

Beth Duke, the executive director of Amarillo’s Center City, has earned all of it.

The Amarillo Globe-News has named Duke its Woman of the Year for 2019. It’s an annual honor the paper has bestowed on overachieving Panhandle women since the mid-1970s. The Man of the Year for 2019 is Paul Engler, the noted cattle mogul and philanthropist. I don’t know Engler well and I am not really qualified to say too much about his honor, other than offer a word of congratulations.

Duke, though, is another matter. I know her well. We were colleagues at the Globe-News. She retired from the paper some years back and went to work at Center City. It was the perfect fit for Duke and for Center City.

Duke was born in Amarillo. She went off to college at Baylor University, then returned to work for her hometown newspaper. If anyone has any more intimate knowledge of Amarillo than Beth Duke, then that person is the best-kept secret in the city’s long and storied history.

Duke brought that knowledge to her post at Center City. It is no coincidence that the city’s downtown revival has occurred during Duke’s time as Center City executive director. No one is a stronger advocate for Amarillo, for its downtown district than Beth Duke.

I am immensely proud of Duke for earning this honor. Her work to revive and rejuvenate the city’s downtown district is dear to my own heart. It is true that others also have played a huge role in the city’s downtown revival. I also am certain that Beth Duke is acutely aware of others’ contributions.

However, as the head of Center City, Beth Duke serves as the spokesman and a leading advocate for the region of the city that has sprung forth on its way toward a bright future.

Well chosen, Globe-News. Well-earned, Beth Duke.

local news

This is not just an urban pipe dream

FORT WORTH — Gideon Toal …

That name came to mind today as we approached Sundance Square in downtown Fort Worth. I now shall explain what that is and why it’s relevant.

Gideon Toal is the name of a Fort Worth-based urban planning outfit that Amarillo officials enlisted when they began discussing the notion of reviving the Texas Panhandle city’s downtown district.

The thought at the time, as I recall it, was that if Gideon Toal could bring some of the creativity to Amarillo, then the city could adopt those ideas and apply them to whatever master plan the city fathers and mothers could develop.

We went to Fort Worth today to look around and soak up the atmosphere of the city’s downtown district. It had been a good while since my wife and I ventured into downtown Cow Town. It is the day after Christmas and it was fairly quiet today. However, I was blown away, as I was the first time I came here, with the enormous variety of cultural opportunities around virtually every corner surrounding Sundance Square.

Then the thought occurred to me: Is this kind of atmsophere — on a scaled-down version — even possible in Amarilo, which is in the midst of its downtown revival?

Scaled down? Yes. Amarillo’s population is peeking over the 200,000-resident mark; Fort Worth’s census is something well north of 800,000. What’s more, Fort Worth is one of two major anchor communities of the Metroplex, which has a metro-area population exceeding 7 million residents.

Melissa Dailey, the former head of Downtown Amarillo Inc., enlisted Gideon Toal way back when. She left DAI eventually and moved to Fort Worth. I’ve lost touch with her. However, the idea of hiring an organization with a demonstrated record of success was an inspired choice.

I have argued on this blog in favor of what the city is trying to achieve with its downtown district. I applaud the incentives it has employed to get private businesses to do business downtown. The payoffs are presenting themselves routinely, with hotels, dining establishments, the championship AA baseball team and assorted forms of boutique retail business coming into the downtown district.

As we walked around Sundance Square and along some of the streets adjacent to it, I got a sense of a certain type of familiarity. I have heard from my friends in Amarillo that they want to see the city turn its downtown district into something similar to what has been born in Fort Worth.

And no, I don’t mean identical. Amarillo cannot duplicate what Fort Worth has developed. It can adapt some form of it to fit its own level of resource.

My hope for Amarillo is that it keeps Fort Worth in mind as it moves forward on its downtown revival track. They have hit a home run in Cow Town.

local news

Expecting a bright 2020 for former city of residence

I’m looking ahead to the new year and I cannot help but think good thoughts about what lies in store for the city my wife and I called home for more than two decades.

Amarillo, Texas, appears to be on the move. I mean, think about some developments.

  • Downtown Amarillo’s progress continues at full throttle. A couple of new “boutique hotels” might be opening for business in the coming year. One, for sure, will start welcoming guests at what used to be called the Barfield Building. It once was a rathole. It has become something quite different. There might be some movement in the Rule Building nearby. I’ll have to wait before assessing that structure’s future. It looks somewhat promising.
  •  Amarillo’s minor-league baseball team played before a packed Hodgetown house in 2019. The Sod Poodles won the Texas League championship. They’ll be returning in 2020 as the defending champs. Hodgetown has been honored as the nation’s top AA ballpark; the Sod Poodles have been recognized as the top AA baseball organization in the country. They have built a solid foundation in Amarillo.
  •  Construction will proceed on the new Texas Tech University School of Veterinary Medicine near the Tech medical school campus in Amarillo. This will be only the second vet school in Texas and will serve a growing demand for large-animal veterinary care in a region that relies on livestock.
  •  West Texas A&M University’s downtown Amarillo campus will bring even more energy to the center of the city.
  •  City Hall is looking to renovate the Civic Center, re-do the Santa Fe Railroad Depot building and relocate its municipal offices somewhere in downtown Amarillo.  A big caveat remains on the final item: The city must identify a location and reveal it to the public well before it asks for residents’ endorsement of a $300 million bond issue.
  •  Interstate 40 and 27 reconstruction hopefully will draw much nearer to completion in the coming year. I don’t get back to Amarillo all that often these days, but I am hoping to see some tangible progress toward an end date for that massive I-40 project.

The city’s future — to my way of thinking — looks a lot brighter today than it did 10 to 12 years ago. It’s progress, man. A city that isn’t progressing remains stagnant. Keep moving forward, Amarillo.

economic news, local news, Sports news

Calling all business to the downtown parking garage!

With all the success enjoyed this past spring and summer by Amarillo’s newly installed AA minor-league baseball team, I had hoped to be able to cheer for the stampede of new business filling up ground-floor storefronts at the parking garage across the street from the ballpark where the Sod Poodles play the Grand Old Game.

Alas, no cheering … at least not just yet.

The parking garage does have a tenant, or so I understand. Joe Taco, the (somewhat) upscale Mexican restaurant is moving into the garage; for all I know, perhaps Joe Taco has made the move.

The rest of the structure, though, appears to remain dark.

The idea was for the ballpark to act as fairly quick lure for businesses looking to profit from all the ballpark activity associated with the Amarillo Sod Poodles. The Sod Poodles played to packed houses at Hodgetown throughout their initial Texas League season.

None of this concern over the lack of parking-garage activity is intended to suggest gloom and doom for the structure. I remain optimistic that the garage investment will pay off. It just might be that the planners and economic gurus perhaps oversold the immediate result that the Sod Poodles would produce once they began their season in Amarillo.

The city’s changing downtown landscape remains a work in progress. So far, the work I have seen suggests that progress is going to follow in due course.

local news

Come clean on the Herring Hotel: Go or no go?

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Let me reaffirm what I believe should happen regarding the fate of a long-vacant structure on the outskirts of downtown Amarillo, Texas.

While developers and investors spruce up other dilapidated structures in the city’s central business district, the Herring Hotel sits there quietly. Its owner, Bob Goodrich, has been seeking some interest in the building for the many years he has been paying taxes on it.

I believe it is time for the city’s power structure — which doesn’t own the building, but which is heavily involved in approving incentives for other property downtown — to deliver the details on what it believes is hindering the Herring Hotel’s possible rebirth.

A number of agencies operating under the city’s umbrella have been involved in some level with negotiations regarding the Herring Hotel. I refer to the Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, Center City, the Amarillo Economic Development Corporation, senior city administrative staff, the Convention and Visitors Council, the Chamber of Commerce. Am I missing anyone?

Well, whatever. The city would be well-advised to offer some sort of statement to the public as to what is happening or not happening with the Herring Hotel. It’s been vacant since the 1970s. The Herring used to serve as the go-to site for practically every social event of consequence in Amarillo. Then it was closed up.

I haven’t been intimately involved in the Herring’s story, but I do know the owner. I am aware of several near misses regarding efforts to land investors who would pour money into reviving the structure.

With all the attention being paid to buildings such as the Barfield, the Rule, the Santa Fe, the Potter County Courthouse, the Kress, the Fisk — not to mention the relocation of several businesses along Polk Street — the Herring just sits there!

Is there a future for the building? Or will it continue to rot? Will it continue to serve as downtown Amarillo’s pre-eminent eyesore?

I believe there are some details about the future of the Herring that ought to be aired out. Is anyone listening at City Hall?

economic news, local news

What must Herring Hotel owner be thinking?

I haven’t talked to the owner of the long-vacant Herring Hotel in downtown Amarillo, Texas, for a good while. I know Bob Goodrich quite well. He’s a nice man, a conscientious property owner — and a fellow with big dreams for the building that once served as the go-to spot for Amarillo’s social elite.

That all stipulated, Goodrich must be steamed as he reads about other abandoned downtown buildings finding new life. The latest such structure is the Rule Building, which developer Todd Harmon wants to turn into a boutique hotel. Then there’s the Barfield Building, which is going to open soon as boutique lodging.

Other structures are finding life, or are being repurposed into something other than their original use.

Then there’s the Herring Hotel building. It sits there. Vacant and rotting. Goodrich pays the taxes on it every year. He seeks developers and investors. He once called me to say he had a potential investor lined up; then the deal fell through.

Someone who at the time had intimate knowledge of downtown Amarillo’s redevelopment efforts told me years ago he was certain there would be a happy ending to the Herring Hotel saga. This individual is no longer part of the downtown in-crowd and, of course, I have retired from daily journalism and have relocated to another community. It’s quite possible this person didn’t know what he was talking about, but … well, that’s grist for another story — maybe. 

I do have a parting thought. Perhaps there ought to be a statement from the downtown redevelopment gurus addressing the reasons why the Herring Hotel continues to sit quietly with no apparent action on the horizon. Center City? The Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone board? City Hall? The Amarillo Matters PAC? The Convention and Visitors Council? Amarillo EDC?

Might there be some way to reveal to the nosey segments of the public what they think they need to know about the Herring Hotel? Is there a future for the building … or not?

business news, local news

Another ’boutique hotel’ sprouting in downtown Amarillo? Wow!

Now it’s the Rule Building, another long-vacant office structure, that’s getting new life as what they call a “boutique hotel.”

Who in the world knew?

According to www.newschannel10.com: “It was a natural progression for us to look at another opportunity. Especially with the growth and revitalization of Downtown Amarillo, we’re really hitting full stride right now, and it was an easy decision for us,” said Todd Harmon, vice president of development for DJ Investment Realty.

OK, before we pop the champagne corks and start a whole round of back-slapping, I want to offer a word of caution.

Even though I do not know Todd Harmon, I am aware of some hiccups that have occurred on projects he has sought to bring to fruition in downtown Amarillo. The Barfield Building is the most prominent of them. Harmon sought investors for the Barfield, but couldn’t make it happen. The building eventually was sold to another party and — voila! — it, too, is being turned into a boutique hotel slated to open in the spring.

I wish Harmon well. I hope he can turn the Rule Building into something beautiful. I want nothing but the very best for the downtown district in Amarillo, where my wife and I lived for more than 20 years before we relocated to the D/FW Metroplex.

As KFDA reports: As of right now, the structure plan consists of eight floors, 110 rooms, a 10,000 square foot banquet space, and a couple of restaurant and dining areas.

Don’t misunderstand me. I hope Harmon pulls this together. I want the project to succeed. I am hopeful that Amarillo’s future is still hurtling toward renewed prosperity. The city’s downtown district has made huge strides in the past half-dozen years.

I am going to offer cautious optimism that the Rule Building is part of that shiny new future.