{"id":19949,"date":"2017-02-23T00:12:02","date_gmt":"2017-02-23T00:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=19949"},"modified":"2017-02-23T00:12:02","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T00:12:02","slug":"patience-please-as-city-remakes-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=19949","title":{"rendered":"Patience, please, as city remakes itself"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Whenever I venture into downtown Amarillo — which isn’t too terribly often these days — I remind myself of what I’ve thought for as long as I can remember.<\/p>\n

It is that no matter the inconvenience we experience today, we’ll be paid off at the end of it all.<\/p>\n

I think of such things whenever the city decides to tear up its streets and repave\/rebuild them. I grumble at the sight of those construction cones and the orange detour signs. Then I remember that there’s always an end to it.<\/p>\n

So it is with this downtown reconstruction effort that’s well underway in many instances.<\/p>\n

Buchanan Street is cluttered with construction gear; streets leading from Pierce onto Fillmore and Buchanan are closed off. The city, truth be told, looks like a giant construction zone, which isn’t very pretty.<\/p>\n

Chain-link fences have gone up around the ground floor of several long-abandoned retail outlets, signaling the start of construction of something shiny, new and — for my money — rather exciting. Tenth Avenue has some new loft apartments, with more on the way.<\/p>\n

And, oh yes, we have that highway construction under way along Interstate 40, with the new direct-access ramp being built onto I-27; TxDOT crews are widening and improving the freeway east and westbound. Yep, it’s a bit of a mess out there — for the time being.<\/p>\n

I’m kind of reminded more or less of the old Vietnam War saying about how U.S. troops occasionally had to “destroy a village in order to save it.” Perhaps that’s overstating it a bit, but I trust you’ll understand what I mean, which is that the city needs to erect these\u00a0 obstacles temporarily while crews work to create something brand new.<\/p>\n

Progress sometimes isn’t pretty. Amarillo’s progress is proceeding at what seems like an accelerating pace, which I hope means a quicker end to the ugliness that will precede what we all hope will be a gleaming new central business and entertainment district.<\/p>\n

I’m willing to wait for as long as it takes.<\/p>\n\n

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Whenever I venture into downtown Amarillo — which isn’t too terribly often these days — I remind myself of what I’ve thought for as long as I can remember. It is that no matter the inconvenience we experience today, we’ll be paid off at the end of it all. I think of such things whenever … Continue reading Patience, please, as city remakes itself<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[1436,2301,4936],"class_list":["post-19949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-news","category-local-news","tag-downtown-amarillo","tag-interstate-40","tag-txdot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19949"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19952,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19949\/revisions\/19952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}