Views From The 4th Estate

Tall City Eattiques

621 W. Wall (685-1969)

Open Monday-Friday 10-6 and Saturday 10-4

This comes to us from the restaurant reviews in the most recent edition of Texas Monthly.

“This antiques mall has got it all under one roof, and the restaurant will come in handy after hours spent perusing furniture, vintage clothing and all manner of collectibles. Stop in for burgers, “made fresh daily” chicken salad (a dense mash of shredded chicken perfectly balanced with not-to-heavy mayo), and specials like beef stew and chicken spaghetti (we recommend the Friday-only sausage-and-chicken gumbo). For dessert, try the homemade banana cake — a thick chunk of banana but bread topped with sugary banana icing — but hold on to your hat: It’s sweet.”

The Midland Downtown Farmers Market is holding a backpack drive, seeking new or gently recycled backpacks to be evenly divided among area schools to distribute to deserving students.

The backpacks can be dropped off at the Farmers’ Market Saturday, Aug. 22 or Aug. 29 at 501 W. Texas Ave. between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Donations will also be taken specifically for the purchase of new backpacks.

With the top 10 selected (make that 11 thanks to a tie for second place in the first heat), it’s time to vote on the overall favorite blog. In the running are:

• Dallas Dirt
• Beal Century 21 Real Estate
• Swamplot
• Shannon Register
• realtynewsreport.com (The Bivens Blog)
• Land with Minerals
• Roselind Hejl’s Austin real estate blog
• LIVE Midland
• Austin Real Estate Guy
• Southeast Texas Real Estate Talk
• Scott Nicholson’s Austin blog

Select your favorite and e-mail your vote to Associate Editor Bryan Pope at bpope@mays.tamu.edu. In the spirit of fair play, please vote only once.

Results will be announced one week from today.

Looking to put a stop to the end of the summer blues? Why not consider indulging yourself in some chocolate?

The city of Midland’s Scarborough/Linebery House, 802 S. Main, will host a luncheon at 11:30 a.m. Aug. 20. Chocolate will be served before, during and after lunch.

The public is invited to attend. The cost is $20 per person and will go toward the maintenance of Midland’s second oldest historic home.

It’s the age old question in Midland. How do we get young people to come here? In one corner, there are those who insist jobs are the answer. In the other, we hear quality of life, specifically the entertainment typically found in cities much larger.

There are no right or wrong answers in what will lure those college grads, even the sons and daughters who once called Midland home.

And while on the surface this doesn’t seem like a downtown issue, it is. In fact, there might not be an area of town that will play a bigger role in bringing young people to Midland and maybe not a more important time to talk about it.

Even as we speak we see new establishments opening up, joining the list of old favorites like Wall Street, Luigi’s and The Bar. There’s also downtown residential in the works. The Lofts on Main has given us a glimpse of the future (we cross our fingers hoping for its success). And as for what’s next, we have written on this blog the ultimate driver of adults (young and old) would reside in a 2-story complex with restaurants, dessert stands and other business on the first floor and an adults-first movie theater on the second. It will add to what is currently in place and what’s to come in bringing nightlife back to downtown.

But in thinking of downtown as a recruiting tool to bring back today’s college grads, shouldn’t we be focused on the jobs? Should downtown’s future be in economic development and not an entertainment district? TIPS Strategies tells us downtown is a site the MDC and those in economic development should target and help bring tomorrow’s jobs to Midland. Do so by developing Class A office space, maybe even creating a vertical office park or having companies like Basic Energy transform the old into their new home. That space would house the types of jobs college students are seeking.

So which way do we go? That ultimately depends on what you think will bring young people to Midland. I am living proof the job is the place to start. The Midland Reporter-Telegram hired me straight out of Texas A&M. While I have known Midland all my life, without a job Midland wouldn’t have been on my radar. The same is true for my wife, a nurse.

Again, is there a right answer? No. But I do lean a certain way.

Later this year, Vision 2020 committees will report on various aspects of where we will go as a community. When those dreams turn to reality over the next decade, there might not be an area more affected than downtown.

During my last post, I referred to a crown jewel of an entertainment district. While we don’t spread rumors, I had a pretty good source tell me that before there ever was a sports complex, there was a conversation about building a Double-A baseball park downtown.

There were reasons this never came to fruition. First and foremost, good luck trying to get the public to support a campaign that involved improving sports facilities but didn’t involve a new football stadium. Not happening.

Still, let’s play what if…..

What if those proposing building new sports facilities had gone through with building a new football stadium at the sports complex area but left an option to build the new baseball park downtown. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.

Seventy nights a year, there is a guarantee of bringing 1,000-2,000-3,000 or more to the heart of the Tall city. You want downtown revitalization? There it is.

Restaurants, commercial development would have been sure to follow. During a time when sports stadiums were being subsidized to help rejuvenate rundown areas of cities nationwide, it would have made sense for Midland to do the same. Or at least you could make an argument.

Of course, there would have been plenty of reasons not to.

- Cost of land would been dramatically higher, the stadium wouldn’t have been as big or as nice.

- The RockHounds probably preferred an area with better accessibility to Odessa. Actually as far as traffic is concerned, there probably isn’t a less convenient location.

- Some would have disagreed with the idea of separating the two facilities

However, with all the attention given to the loop area during the late 1990s and early-to-mid 2000s, the sports complex just made a lot of sense. For those interested in a downtown revitalization, it is fun to ask what if.