I am generally disinclined to comment on private business in this blog, but at this moment I am going to make an exception.

A big hotel building has been abandoned along Interstate 40 in Amarillo. It’s the Wyndham Hotel, formerly known as the Ambassador Hotel.

When it was the Ambassador, this hotel was the cream of the Amarillo hospitality crop. It used to be the go-to place for local and regional conventions. The Panhandle Press Association would meet there annually; when Rotary District 5730 held its conferences in Amarillo, it headquartered at the Ambassador.

Then it was sold to someone else. They changed the name to the Wyndham, which is a decent national brand, from what I was able to discern.

The Wyndham didn’t make it in Amarillo. The hotel owners turned out the lights, apparently so suddenly that employees were caught by total surprise.

The place has been dark for some time. I don’t know the particulars of what — if anything — is being done to bring new ownership to the building or whether the current owners will be able to lift themselves out of bankruptcy and reopen the structure.

I just hate seeing it sitting there vacant whenever I zip past the site on the north side of I-40. When I look at it, I think often of another vacant hotel site my wife and I see when we drive along U.S. 287 through Wichita Falls on our way to the Metroplex.

That hotel used to be the Radisson. It’s been dark for several years. It, too, sits on a piece of prime commercial real estate property. The bad news is that the former Radisson is getting shabbier, seedier and more run down every time we drive past it.

I do not want that fate to befall the former Wyndham site.

Amarillo’s future is looking too bright as its downtown revival progresses. Surely there must be a way to bring back this once-vibrant hospitality site.

My heart hopes for the best.