The announcement that Amarillo’s downtown area will soon receive a minor league baseball team is just the latest boon to an already healthy economy in the center of the city.
As The Amarillo Globe-News reports, Amarillo’s downtown area already has 16 commercial development projects in the works. The projects are worth a combined $150 million dollars to the local economy.
Amarillo National Bank Executive Vice President William Ware said the downtown area is seeing more growth than at any time in the past 60 years.
David Driskill, the executive director of Texas Tech’s Urban Tech Design Center, suggested that Amarillo should try to emulate the area around Denver’s Coors Field, where the arrival of the baseball stadium led to a boom in trendy restaurants and boutiques in the surrounding neighborhood.
“Unless there are restaurants and things to do beyond your destination, people come into that destination, and then they’re gone,” Driskill said.