Square Feet: In El Paso, Out With the Old City Hall, in With a New Stadium

In its place, crews are already racing to build a $50 million baseball stadium for El Paso’s new Triple-A minor league baseball team, which is scheduled to begin playing games there next season.

The stadium project has become the focal point of an urban revitalization effort, centered on the central business district but extending to other parts of the city. In November, El Pasoans voted nearly three to one to authorize $473 million in bond issues that will finance more than 85 public improvement projects.

Those range from parks, pools and recreation projects to a children’s museum, Hispanic cultural center and multipurpose performing arts center. The baseball stadium isn’t part of the bond program, but voters approved a 2 percent increase in the city’s hotel occupancy tax to help pay for its construction.

“This is more than a redevelopment plan for downtown,” said Joyce Wilson, El Paso’s city manager. “It’s really an economic and community development plan for the entire city that includes a comprehensive focus on downtown.”

Proponents of revitalization hope the many public improvements will help attract employers and better-paying jobs to a city that has been a trade corridor for hundreds of years, but has lagged many of its Texas peers in economic growth during the last three decades.

“There was a period of about 25 years when other cities around the country were reforming themselves and rebuilding their downtowns, and this community never did that,” Ms. Wilson said. “We’re way behind the curve, but we’re catching up quickly.”

Local investors have been transforming disused downtown properties into rental apartments, restaurants, bars, retail shops and office space for several years. Paul Foster, a part-owner of the new baseball franchise, has renovated several properties including the historic 12-story Anson Mills Building and the seven-story Centre Building, which he linked together as an office and retail complex. Mr. Foster is executive chairman of Western Refining Inc., a Fortune 500 oil refining and marketing company based in El Paso.

Another of those entrepreneurs is Octavio Gomez, who began opening downtown bars and restaurants here in 2005, creating what is now the Garden Entertainment District. In addition to several mixed-use projects downtown, in March he developed a 14-unit rental apartment complex in downtown’s Union Plaza and had the entire property leased in two days.

“Downtown was going to happen, whether it was backed by the bonds or organically; the bonds just sped up everything,” he said. “Now with the big boy coming into the neighborhood, the stadium, I couldn’t ask for anything better than that.”

At the site, city departments were forced to move to leased office space and the demolition of City Hall, built less than 40 years ago, ignited vocal opposition, in part because the issue was not put before the voters.

Advocates of the stadium’s site selection have held up the hotel tax increase, which voters approved with a 60 percent majority last November, as evidence of community support for demolition of the building to make way for the new stadium. But the redevelopment actions have rippled through the mayoral race.

In an eight-way mayoral election on May 11, a businessman, Oscar Leeser, who opposed the demolition, took nearly half of the votes cast and will now face City Representative Steve Ortega, who was criticized for voting for it, in a runoff election on June 15.

Ms. Wilson said the council’s move avoided the expense of buying a site, which could have involved negotiating with potentially unwilling sellers, or required eminent domain powers to compel a sale. The quick decision enabled the city to commit to home games by the 2014 season, a crucial provision that allowed MountainStar Sports Group, a group of local investors, to buy the Triple-A Tucson Padres franchise late last year.