In a selfless act of political immolation, City Representative Cortney Niland threw her aspirations for continued public service on the pyre of MountainStar’s ambitions. In a guest editorial in today’s El Paso Times, Niland asserts
We are collecting the dividends of past administrations but we also need to be mindful that we continue to “pay it forward” in order to safeguard our future.
This includes advancing at a fast pace the critical projects we committed to in the 2012 bond initiative. We are fortunate that the voters laid out a clear vision for a better community; now, we need to act strategically with current leadership to deliver on the promises.
What she means is that we need to go full speed ahead with MountainStar’s plan to build a soccer stadium as quickly as possible, damn the costs. After all, it’s only the taxpayer footing the bill.
Does the name Steve Ortega ring a bell?
Rich,
Unfortunately MLS declined to give El Paso a franchise. Soccer Stadiums hold 30-50 thousand people. The arena proposed is meant to replace the crumbling County Colliseum and will only hold 12 thousand people.
Mountain Star has nothing to do with this Arena.
The Houston Dynamo stadium holds 22,000 people, according to the Dynamo website.
http://www.houstondynamo.com/stadium/information
The Rio Tinto Stadium, home to Real Salt Lake, holds 20,000 soccer fans.
http://riotintostadium.com/stadium-images/
You seem to be singularly uninformed.
Sadly MLS is dead for El Paso. Per the EP times article, the Arena only seats 12,500. That’s half the size required by MLS per your own links. I believe you and your cynicism are the only one who is “singularly uninformed”.
Well, then I guess there’s no hurry to build that downtown stadium. I guess we can wait till the older bonds mature, and thereby minimize the impact on our property tax rates. Really, with no major tenant lined up, it’d be silly to rush pell-mell into construction.
Thanks for clearing that up.
So if it had a tenant …. Like the baseball stadium you were against… You’d be Ok with it? But since it doesn’t have a tennant like the crusty 4000 seat Colliseum or the 6000 seat Haskins center you are against. This town is a logical rest spot for road shows…but they won’t set up shop for 4000 seats…they will for 13000 seats and Las Cruces gets those now. Do you “get it” now? Again my original point was mountan star has nothing to do with this and I’m pissed off we don’t get a soccer team.