#GoodNewsFriday: We Need a Bigger Square
You might have seen this photo shared by the Stamford Chamber of Commerce earlier this week.* My wife took it on Saturday night. The sunset is beautiful, but it captures a piece of something else exciting: Stamford’s square was completely packed with cars on a Saturday night, from one side to the other! I heard some citizens older than me say they’d never seen the square so busy.
This came thanks to “Elvis” showing at the Grand Theatre and a wedding reception at The Penick Hughes at the same time, but it wasn’t just Saturday night. “Elvis” drew huge crowds on Friday night and Sunday afternoon as well. We saw something similar in June when “Top Gun: Maverick” coincided with another event at The Penick Hughes. It wasn’t very many years ago that downtown Stamford was struggling in the daytime and dead at night. There are still a few vacant buildings and our work is far from done, but thanks to a lot of hard work and investment by a lot of people, Stamford’s downtown square is more alive than I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime.
The most famous line in the movie “Jaws” is an admonition that the characters “need a bigger boat.” A few years ago, I looked at the growing Texas Cowboy Reunion and observed that we might need a bigger parking lot (we definitely do). Now, at the rate things are going, we just might need a bigger square.
*If you don’t follow the Chamber, you should. New manager Preston Cox has really kicked up the Chamber’s social media presence and has some exciting things in the works.
“Good News Friday” is a weekly feature spotlighting positive news and activities in the #StamfordTexas community as a part of our quest to build a #BetterStamford.