Bisected by Route 66, Amarillo is pure cowboy. As proof, for the second year in a row, True West magazine named it a Top 10 True Western Town for 2016.
“When people think of Texas, what they’re really thinking is Amarillo,” said Eric Miller, director of communications for the Amarillo Convention and Visitor Council.
With craggy canyons, pine-studded mesas and dusty desert as far as the eye can see, the surrounding countryside looks to be straight out of “Gunsmoke.” Ten-gallon hats, pointy-toe boots, ranch-working cowboys, American quarter horses, he-man-size steaks and “Howdy, podner!” reign here. The Amarillo Livestock Auction, one of the nation’s largest, sells more than 100,000 head annually, and there’s a cattle drive each year right through town.
Texas longhorns are not the only eye-catching attraction these days on the streets of Amarillo.
“Right now, downtown is full of cranes,” said Donna Paraliticci, general manager of the city’s first convention center hotel, the Embassy Suites Amarillo, set to open in June 2017.
Her property is but one phase of this Texas town’s current exciting facelift.
“Until recently, you could call us ‘everytown,’” Miller said. “Outside working hours, downtown became empty. But that’s changing fast.”
In the works are a parking garage/retail complex; an office building; a multipurpose event venue to serve as a baseball stadium and a corporate event, meetings and concert site; lush streetscapes; and residential lofts and apartments.
Amarillo now offers planners room choices with meeting space in several parts of the city. Near Interstate 40, the 263-room Wyndham Garden Hotel sports a garden atrium suitable for receptions, and the Holiday Inn Express and Suites West Amarillo is near the medical center.
A classically restored, 11-story historic brick building houses the 100-room Courtyard by Marriott Downtown. Five blocks from the Amarillo Civic Center, the hotel has 1,900 square feet of meeting space and a full catering menu.
“Amarillo’s open for business now, but starting in the summer of 2017, we will be very open for business,” Miller said. “By 2020, our downtown will look much different than it does now. Amarillo is getting ready to explode.”
Convention Central
The primary meeting facility for the Texas Panhandle, the 340,000-square-foot Amarillo Civic Center Complex in the heart of downtown is composed of the Civic Center and the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts. Home to the WRCA World Championship Ranch Rodeo, the civic center includes a 4,870-fixed-seat coliseum, an auditorium with 2,324 seats, two exhibit halls, two ballrooms — the largest at 21,000 square feet — and flexible-space rooms. The acoustically superb Globe-News Center hosts the Amarillo Symphony in its 1,300-seat theater.
“We’re at home at a rodeo, but we love our symphony here,” said Miller. “And someone there is likely to have on a cowboy hat.”
Convention Hotel
Amarillo has big meeting news. In June 2017, the city’s first-ever convention center hotel, the 226-room, six-story Embassy Suites Amarillo, complete with a 10,000-square-foot ballroom, will open across the street from the civic center and next to the Globe-News Center for Performing Arts.
“A lot of conventions require that at least 50 percent of their room block be at a convention center hotel,” said Paraliticci. “With the opening of this property, we’ll be able to go after business in Amarillo that we’ve never been able to host in the past.”
The hotel is booking meetings now for 2017.
State Park
A 30,000-acre taste of rugged Western scenery, Palo Duro Canyon State Park, 25 miles from Amarillo, hosts meetings and entertains attendees. Down in the canyon, 4,000-square-foot Mack Dick Group Pavilion accommodates 169 people in its stone and timber structure, built to blend into the landscape. Attendees can hike and mountain bike, hop on a horse at Cowgirls and Cowboys in the West, and rappel or zoom across the canyon at Palo Duro Adventure Park and Zip Line.
And in Palo Duro’s outdoor amphitheater, a rollicking history of the settling of the Texas Panhandle — the outdoor musical drama “Texas” — holds sway on summer nights.
History Halls
A tribute to “the horse that settled the West,” the design of the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame and Museum is all contemporary flagstone and wood. For evening receptions, its Grand Hall accommodates 200 to 300 guests.
“We explain to meeting groups how this country was built on the back of the American quarter horse and how the people in the Hall of Fame are important to the breed,” said Melissa Loftin, the facility’s community outreach liaison.
Nicknamed “the Smithsonian with a Texas accent,” the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, the state’s largest, can seat up to 200 diners in its popular Derrick Hall.
Chow Time
For dining with guaranteed entertainment, the Big Texan Steak Ranch is a group destination that’s pure Texas. An Amarillo landmark on historic Route 66 since 1960, the Big Texan is famous for its 72-ounce steak dinner challenge. Anyone who can eat that huge hunk of beef, along with a shrimp cocktail, salad, a baked potato and a roll within 60 minutes, gets the meal free. Other diners get to watch the competition.
Under its towering, long-legged cowboy sign, the eatery smokes its own ribs and brews its own beer. Among the three private meeting spaces are an interior room that seats up to 80 and a patio for up to 400.
Amarillo, Texas
Location: Center of the Texas Panhandle
Access: Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport; Interstate 40
Major Meeting Spaces: Amarillo Civic Center, Wyndham Garden Hotel, Holiday Inn West Amarillo
Hotel Rooms: 6,600 rooms by the end of 2016
Off-Site Venues: Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts, American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame and Museum, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Mack Dick Group Pavilion
Contact Info:
Amarillo Convention and Visitor Council
806-374-1497
www.visitamarillo.com
