{"id":21247,"date":"2017-04-25T02:35:27","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T02:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=21247"},"modified":"2017-04-26T12:40:58","modified_gmt":"2017-04-26T12:40:58","slug":"city-clearing-the-way-toward-more-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=21247","title":{"rendered":"City clearing the way toward more progress"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I’ve actually discovered a downside to no longer working full time in the job I used to do.<\/p>\n

It is that I am no longer “in the loop” with events that occur daily in Amarillo’s downtown business district. My perch as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News kept me close to the action. Those days are gone.<\/p>\n

They’re knocking down an old retail building at the corner of Ninth Avenue and Polk Street. I had to find out about it by inquiring on social media.<\/p>\n

I also learned that once was known as the Blackburn Building is going to become a parking lot for motor vehicles driven into downtown to use some of the other sites being rehabilitated, renovated and rebuilt.<\/p>\n

There’s the usual expressions of dismay by those who lament the loss of an old building. I feel their angst and their pain. I hate seeing old structures knocked down, too. Then again, it’s fair to ask: What would the Blackburn Building have become had the wreckers hadn’t started leveling it?<\/p>\n

This, I suppose, is my way of expressing continued support for the makeover that’s underway in Amarillo’s downtown district.<\/p>\n

The old Levine Building next to where the Blackburn Building once stood is being redone. That’s a good thing, yes? On 10th Avenue,\u00a0the old Firestone service center is being transformed into a residential\/retail location, or so I understand. That, too, preserves an old structure.<\/p>\n

There’s plenty of new-building construction also underway farther north along Polk. Let’s not forget the major makeover being done to the Commerce Building, which eventually will become home to West Texas A&M University’s downtown Amarillo campus; the WT site won’t resemble the Commerce Building and it will essentially be a new structure.<\/p>\n

All this activity isn’t producing a completely positive short-term outlook. For instance, WT is going to vacate the Chase Tower, along with Southwestern Public Service, which is set to move into a new office complex on Buchanan Street. Many floors in the Chase Tower are going dark — and soon. Commercial real estate brokers have assured me that they are supremely confident the Chase Tower’s darkened offices will be filled again in short order.<\/p>\n

Let’s hope for the best on that.<\/p>\n

Change can be painful, especially when it involves wrecking balls, dump trucks and front-end loaders. We’re seeing some of the pain being inflicted now where the Blackburn Building once stood.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0remain hopeful that we’ll get past the pain just as soon as new business and entertainment activity breathes new life into Amarillo’s downtown district.<\/p>\n\n

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I’ve actually discovered a downside to no longer working full time in the job I used to do. It is that I am no longer “in the loop” with events that occur daily in Amarillo’s downtown business district. My perch as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News kept me close to the action. Those … Continue reading City clearing the way toward more progress<\/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":[179,5705,1436,5312],"class_list":["post-21247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-news","category-local-news","tag-agn-media","tag-commerce-building","tag-downtown-amarillo","tag-wtamu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21247","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=21247"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21271,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21247\/revisions\/21271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}