After decades of sitting vacant in the heart of downtown Amarillo, the historic Herring Hotel is finally taking its first steps toward a long-awaited comeback.
Developers, architects, city leaders and community members gathered Thursday for the official kickoff of the Herring Hotel redevelopment project, unveiling plans for a roughly $100 million restoration that aims to preserve one of Amarillo's most recognizable landmarks while transforming it into an upscale boutique hotel.
The project represents the latest effort to breathe new life into a building that has stood empty for nearly 50 years despite multiple redevelopment attempts. This time, project leaders say preserving the hotel's history will be just as important as preparing it for the future.
Originally built in 1926, the Herring Hotel was completed in just six and a half months at a cost of $1.2 million. At the time, the 600-room hotel reflected Amarillo's rapid growth during the 1920s, a decade that shaped much of the city's downtown skyline.
Todd Harmon, president of Harmon Development, said honoring that history is one of the project's driving principles.
"It's integral to the success of this project and personally it's one of those things that I insist on because I want to be able to display Amarillo in its golden period," Harmon said. "The 1920s were really the golden era where Amarillo tripled in size. So many of the downtown landmark properties were built between 1925 and 1928."
For Harmon, restoring the Herring Hotel is about more than renovating an aging building. He said it's an opportunity to revive a piece of Amarillo's identity after decades of neglect.
"That this property was a part of the starting, the real founding, the growth of this market and really getting on the map. For it to sit here and languish for the last 50 years, to bring it back to its original glory, and even more so, I think is something that I can look back on, my grandchildren can look back on and say, we brought that back to life," he said.
Leading the design is Campo Architecture & Interior Design, a firm known for adapting historic buildings into hotels. Partner and Director of Interior Design Mary Gilmore said the team's goal is to protect the building's character while creating a destination that appeals to today's travelers.
"Our primary goal with this hotel is to preserve the historic features," Gilmore said. "We really want to bring back the history and the life and the story that this building told, but then also tell the other story of what Amarillo can be in the future and bring fresh breath into this amazing building."
Gilmore said historic hotels offer an authenticity that cannot be recreated through new construction.
"Historic hotels are such a special amenity in a city," she said. "You can't recreate character like this. Ground up hotels just, they don't have the same sense of place and authenticity that you can find with a historic building. So it's so valuable to preserve that culture and that sense of community."
Plans call for the hotel to include about 231 guest rooms, including 21 suites, along with luxury amenities such as a rooftop restaurant, an outdoor pool and redesigned gathering spaces intended to serve both visitors and local residents.
Gilmore said the vision extends beyond guest rooms.
"Making it a social space that's got buzzing activity in the lobby, luxury amenities, a new rooftop restaurant, an outdoor pool, and just very comfortable, plush guest rooms where you know this is going to be an icon of Amarillo and a destination for visitors," she said.
The redevelopment will unfold over the next several years. Harmon said design work is expected to wrap up during the first quarter of 2027, with interior demolition beginning in the second quarter. The demolition will focus on removing outdated walls and infrastructure to accommodate modern guest rooms and updated mechanical, plumbing and electrical systems while leaving the historic structure intact.
"So, demo is going to be going on, internal demo, not the building itself, but some of the walls and things, because we have to adjust the size of rooms and things and new mechanical, new plumbing, new electrical," Harmon said. "And all that has to be cleared out over the next nine months."
A ceremonial groundbreaking is expected next spring, and developers are targeting an opening during the first quarter of 2029.
City leaders say the project is expected to benefit more than just downtown's appearance. Amarillo City Councilmember Don Tipps said restoring the Herring Hotel could help strengthen tourism and generate new economic activity by attracting travelers passing through the city.
"The Herring Hotel has been here for 100 years," Tipps said. "It's so much a part of Amarillo's history that reviving this is going to begin to not only save a part of Amarillo's story, but also bring back what was lost."
Tipps noted that approximately 55,000 vehicles travel Interstate 40 through Amarillo each day, creating an opportunity to attract more overnight visitors.
"We have 55,000 people drive down I-40 a day," he said. "What we want, you know, as taxpayers, we want to keep our taxes low, right? So, the best way to offset that is to generate revenue, and that's through tourism. So, if this hotel being one of the top in Texas, this helps generate that tourism, brings people to Amarillo, the business owners, the restaurants, the hoteliers, they're able to spend money here and offsets our taxes, which is great."
For a building that has spent half a century waiting for a second chance, Thursday's kickoff marked more than the announcement of another redevelopment plan. It marked the beginning of work that developers hope will restore one of Amarillo's most storied buildings and give it a new role in the city's future while preserving the history that made it a landmark in the first place.
