Amarillo City Council Appoints Patel to AEDC Board

Dipak Patel/Screenshot by City of Amarillo YouTube

Amarillo hotelier Dipak Patel will be the newest director of the Amarillo Economic Development Corporation, following the Amarillo City Council meeting on Tuesday.

By a unanimous vote, the City Council appointed Patel to serve a three-year term on the AEDC Board of Directors. Patel, who was first nominated by Amarillo City Councilman Tom Scherlen, will replace Lloyd Brown on the AEDC Board.

Patel is a longtime local hotelier who operates a number of popular local hotels, including a Comfort Suites location, a Holiday Inn Express location, a Candlewood Suites location, and a Staybridge Suites location. According to his LinkedIn profile, Patel is president of Vidhi Hotels, LTD. Aside from his appointment to the AEDC Board, Patel also currently serves on the Amarillo-Potter Events Venue District Board of Directors.

During the debate over Patel’s nomination, Mayor Cole Stanley praised Patel and highlighted the skills he feels the businessman would bring to the board.

“I love the fact that he’s an international businessperson,” Stanley said. “He brings something that we haven’t had here in the way in which we are marketing Amarillo to outside entities that we want to attract — certain types of businesses. He is a hotelier, but he does a lot more than that in a lot of different ways.”

Aside from Patel, several other names were also suggested by members of the City Council as possible picks to the AEDC Board. These individuals include Dean Crump, Jared Fuller, Rodney Hill, and former Amarillo City Councilman Howard Smith.

Patel will now serve alongside the current AEDC Board of Directors members. Excluding Brown, the current members are Scott Bentley, Helen Burton, Andrew Hall, and Adrian Meander.