When we decided to renovate the Old Nichols Battery building into Amendment 21 in early 2017, we didn’t have any  similar industry anchors other than The Mill. At that time, downtown, and more specifically the S.O.D.A District didn’t have any growth projections to go off of, but that didn’t stop us from moving forward with creating a prohibition-themed whisk(e)y bar downtown. Since we opened in April of 2018, we’ve had nothing but a warm welcome from Abilene, and visitors that come in from all over the world. Even though we rely heavily on our Abilene geographic, we have seen an impressive uptick in out-of-town visitors that love what we are doing. However, there is no hiding the numbers; our busiest nights are directly correlated to the amount of people downtown for events(weddings, conferences, etc) that visit us before or after their event takes place. The number one complaint we get from out-of-town visitors, is the fact they love what we have going downtown, but there is nowhere for them to stay in proximity of our downtown districts(NODA/SODA). We understand the development of a thriving downtown will bring in competition, but we are looking more into the positives of having a higher population density downtown to increase curbside foot traffic, which drives more revenue to our business.

– Stanton Taylor, Amendment 21