Potter County | featured news

On Monday, Amarillo moved one step closer to bringing in a Major League Baseball-affiliated team to make their home in the heart of downtown.
Mayor Paul Harpole was all smiles as he held up his cellphone to take photographs of an excavator ripping through the red brick wall outside the former downtown Coca-Cola distribution plant.
“Doesn’t it feel like baseball weather?” he asked a healthy blend of city leaders at the site who were all dressed in warm jackets and yellow batter’s helmets.

PANHANDLE — Pantex Plant officials revealed Monday that a 2015 review showed water levels on the site are dropping, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the water has less pollutants in it, including chrome and high explosives.
The review, which went over Pantex water and soil samples from July of 2015 to the end of the second quarter of 2016, showed that Pantex’s water pumps and treatment sites handled 201 million gallons of water during that time span, removing 769 pounds of chrome and high explosives.

Midtown Wood Fired Kitchen closed its doors Monday after only seven months in business. The closure seemed to come out of the blue. Only four days earlier, Midtown Kitchen held its first wine dinner of the season.
But on Monday, a sign with notice of its demise hung outside the front door.
“Thank you Amarillo for your patronage and support! Unfortunately, Midtown Kitchen is closed. Please keep an eye out for another concept soon,” read the message on a chalkboard pressed against the window.

Quick Quack Car Wash will open its fifth Amarillo location on Wednesday, Nov. 9. The 1901 Bell St. location will give out free car washes from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday through Nov. 18 in hopes of drawing in new customers.
Car washes at Quick Quacks on East Amarillo Boulevard, Georgia Street, South Coulter Street and South Grand Street will still cost the normal amount during the promotional period.
Their first location opened in Amarillo in 1999. Based in Roseville, Calif., the company now has 28 car washes across four states.

If all seven bond propositions pass, the tax increase for Jennifer and Dustin Chase would be about $411 a year, and the annual increase for Velinda Jackson Pacheco and Jerry Pacheco would be about $529. A story on A1 of Sunday’s Amarillo Globe-News contained incorrect information.

J. Pat Hickman has been named one of the nine new directors of the Texas Tech Foundation. He was installed in the post during their first meeting on Friday. Hickman is chairman and CEO of Happy State Bank and Trust Co. in Canyon.
Approved by the Texas Tech Foundation board of directors this summer, the incoming members were subsequently approved by the Texas Tech University System Board of Regents at their October meeting. The new directors will serve four-year terms ending August 31, 2020.

A contractor working Monday morning near Bushland Elementary School broke a gas service line and crews are working to make repairs without affecting service to the school, according to Atmos Energy.
Atmos spokesman Roy Urrutia said the damaged line services a home in the area. “We’re hoping to bypass the leak and keep the school on,” he said.
Students were kept indoors as a precaution, Bushland ISD Superintendent Don Wood said.

All types of gems, minerals, fossilized rocks and petrified wood ranging in price from a few dollars to thousands were on display at the 55th annual gem and mineral show Sunday at the Civic Center.
Merchants from the tri-state area and beyond brought out hand-carved, hand-polished, sliced, lasered and wire-wrapped pieces to display and sell. And Lake Meredith Alibates Flint Quarries flintknapper Jimmy Green was on hand to demonstrate how arrowheads and other tools are made.

As of September, Amarillo employed approximately 7,300 construction, mining and logging workers, the most since the Great Recession began taking shape in 2008.
With few mining and virtually no logging operations in Amarillo, nearly all 7,300 workers make a living in some type of construction job.
This is in stark contrast to January and February 2012, when only 5,600 Amarilloans were employed in construction.
Former laborers took their calloused hands to the oil fields, Western Builders president Jerry Rohane said, and others were laid off by downsizing.

Cody Foster has been searching for a job for three years.
“You can’t really build a car from the ground up like you can a house,” Foster said, detailing the awe in his mind of seeing a house come together. He’s been hoping to find work in property development.
“I don’t see me having a dream job,” Foster said rather bluntly. “I don’t see myself getting a dream job if I can’t (at least) get one job as my second job.”
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