Downtown El Paso is already barely accessible. What effect will 5 years of freeway and deck park construction have on it?
All those businesses who are struggling now, who are gasping for breath, just trying to keep the lights on, will be forced out of business. Smart business owners will be reluctant to open in downtown knowing the next 5 to 7 years will be lean with little traffic.
Sure, the fat cats can weather the storm. Maybe they’ll even buy up some properties during the economic downturn, but once the construction is complete, downtown will be starting from pretty much scratch.
And after the freeway reopens, with the completed deck park? Will people flock to see it?
The deck park advocates promise that it will be a big draw, but I don’t believe it. On the surface the deck park will be just a park. No one except a few civil engineering nerds will be staggered by the cap over the freeway.
Deck parks don’t work because of the deckiness. They work because people need another park. Does downtown need another park?
Houston Park, on Montana at Ange, is never crowded. Neither is Tom Lea park at Brown and Schuster. The same with Armijo Park in Segundo. Mundy Park, in Sunset, has a lot fewer visitors since they moved the Rescue Mission from Paisano.
There are few school age kids in the neighborhoods surrounding the proposed park. That’s why the El Paso Independent School District is closing schools in the inner city. Are people going to drive from the fringe, from the urban sprawl, to take their kids to a park over the freeway, when there are comparable parks closer to their homes?
Once, maybe. Maybe twice. But then they’ll scratch the deck park off their bucket list and never have to go there again.
Because once you get to the deck park, all you’re going to see is a park.
I haven’t seen anything in any of the plans that makes this anything more than a bona fide boondoggle. They should have told everyone they wanted to put an HEB or a Trader Joe’s on top of the freeway. Then people might have supported the deck park.
The cost of the deck park is projected to be more than $400 million by the time it’s finished. That number will likely be a billion dollars by the time all the checks are cashed, with inflation and change orders.
That $400 million would pay for a lot of street repairs.
What does El Paso need? Another park, or street repairs?
Is it really a park or a fancy sports stadium?
First the park, and then the soccer stadium.
This is kinda like deja vu all over again, innit? Remember the BS leading up to, and including the bond issues of 2012 and the destruction of a perfectly good City Hall building? We did not need any of that, and we sure as hell don’t need any of this! One thing we needed then, and we need even more today is some serious street improvements! I, for one, am sick and tired of beating up my car’s suspension driving on bumpy, rough, patch, cracked, shitty streets! Even when they do repave a street, the work is very poor in quality, and holes and cracks appear within days of completion! Please, somebody downtown listen to your citizens this time!
We, the voters, turned this down already; however, at least one “Commissioner” decided to “damn the torpedos” and push throughhis vanity project. Taxation without representaion IS BACK.
God you are an idiot. All the same talking points about the ballpark and you were wrong about everything.
How was I wrong about the ballpark?
For a TJs I might be persuaded to support it 🙂