Wes over at FMX finally hit the nail on the head: Downtown Lubbock is the “fetch” of West Texas urban planning. It’s never going to happen, but the city won’t stop trying to make it happen. We’ve been hearing the word “revitalization” since 1997—back when Titanic was in theaters and people still thought the Macarena was a good idea. Fitting, really, since our downtown plan is also a slow-moving disaster that everyone saw coming from miles away.
After three decades of politicians calling downtown a “priority,” the progress is officially moving slower than a snail on Dilaudid. It’s a classic Hub City cycle: hire a consultant, draw a pretty map, form a committee, hold a press conference, and then watch as the tumbleweeds reclaim their rightful territory. We have spent thirty years listening to the same broken record, and at this point, the needle hasn’t just skipped—it’s bored a hole straight through the vinyl.
The suggestion on the table? Stop pretending and just move city offices into the hollowed-out husks of abandoned big-box stores. Why fight the inevitable? If we can’t turn downtown into a “vibrant urban hub,” we might as well lean into our true heritage: vast, empty parking lots and repurposed Sears buildings. Wes even joked about paving the whole thing over for student housing, which is funny because that’s the only thing in this town that actually gets built in under ten years.
If it takes 30 years to “revitalize” six blocks, should we expect the grand opening ribbon-cutting to happen before or after the sun expands and consumes the earth?
