{"id":37044,"date":"2019-05-17T02:11:24","date_gmt":"2019-05-17T02:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=37044"},"modified":"2019-05-17T02:11:24","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T02:11:24","slug":"cave-people-eating-their-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=37044","title":{"rendered":"CAVE people: Eating their words?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=MPEV%20%23Hodgetown%20%23SodPoodles%20%23DowntownAmarillo%20%23AmarilloMatters&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/hodgetown.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-36489\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/hodgetown-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/hodgetown-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/hodgetown.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A friend of mine &#8212; who communicates with me these days on social media &#8212; brought up an unofficial group of Amarillo-area residents who have had their heads handed to them.<\/p>\n<p>He mentioned &#8220;CAVE&#8221; people. &#8220;CAVE&#8221; is an acronym for Citizens Against Virtually Everything. I commented briefly the other day about how the Amarillo Sod Poodles, the city&#8217;s new Texas League baseball franchise, are leading the league in average attendance while playing ball at Hodgetown, the new 7,000-seat ballpark in downtown Amarillo.<\/p>\n<p>My friend noted that the CAVE folks were &#8220;against&#8221; the baseball team, against building the ballpark, against efforts to revive Amarillo&#8217;s once-moribund downtown district.<\/p>\n<p>The CAVE folks aren&#8217;t an official group, such as Amarillo Matters, which has formed to promote downtown revitalization and other economic development efforts.<\/p>\n<p>But they&#8217;re out there.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, there has been healthy skepticism about downtown efforts. Some folks want he Herring Hotel to get a boost from City Hall. Others have lamented the absence &#8212; yet! &#8212; of any retail outlets springing up in that parking garage across the street from Hodgetown.<\/p>\n<p>I do recall the CAVE cadre\/cabal saying the multipurpose event venue would fall flat. I&#8217;m happy to notice, even from some distance these days, that the MPEV hasn&#8217;t done what the CAVErs predicted.<\/p>\n<p>If anything, it is proving &#8212; and, yes, it&#8217;s still early &#8212; to be one of the wisest investments the city has made since, oh, the arrival in 1999 of the Bell\/Textron aircraft assembly plant next to Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport.<\/p>\n<p>That project has worked out well. I believe the Sod Poodles, Hodgetown and the city&#8217;s effort to pump new life into downtown will work out, too.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=MPEV%20%23Hodgetown%20%23SodPoodles%20%23DowntownAmarillo%20%23AmarilloMatters&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend of mine &#8212; who communicates with me these days on social media &#8212; brought up an unofficial group of Amarillo-area residents who have had their heads handed to them. He mentioned &#8220;CAVE&#8221; people. &#8220;CAVE&#8221; is an acronym for Citizens Against Virtually Everything. I commented briefly the other day about how the Amarillo Sod &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=37044\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">CAVE people: Eating their words?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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":[9],"tags":[290,7881,581,1436,8347,3153,3945],"class_list":["post-37044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-city-hall","tag-amarillo-sod-poodles","tag-bell-helicopter","tag-downtown-amarillo","tag-hodgetown","tag-mpev","tag-rick-husband-airport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37044","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=37044"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37045,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37044\/revisions\/37045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}