The City announced today that the new $180 million arena will be built in that cool historic neighborhood south of the Civic Center.
You’ll remember that the voters approved the arena back in 2012, along with a package that included museum and library upgrades, a Chicano cultural memorial, an interactive digital wall, and a new children’s museum.
But the question then and now is, Who wants a downtown arena?
Obviously some special interests are pulling the strings to get that arena done. No justification has been offered for a facility that duplicates other facilities, like the Haskins Center, the Civic Center, and the Coliseum. The powers behind the throne of City government stuck it in with stuff like library upgrades, and a children’s museum, apparently in the hope that the voters eyes would glaze over and they wouldn’t notice that the City was dropping $180 million for some facility we don’t really need.
But whether we need it or not, we’ll be paying for it for a long time.
You know, they can scrub the archives of NewspaperTree, and selectively delete old stories from the El Paso Times website, but bloggers will remember who gifted us all this shiny expensive stuff that will vault us into first place as the city with the highest property tax rates in the country.
Interesting to note two things. They paid a firm from outside El Paso 5 MILLION dollars to decide where it should go. This project is getting fast tracked because the county is paying for a historic district project that’s looking at EVERY building downtown. IF a building goes on the historic registry, the city can’t touch it. A few other things to note. That area encompasses around 185,000 square feet. After parking, the building itself, and other needs, how big is that stadium going to be? How many people will it seat? The county coliseum building itself is around 60,000 square feet and holds up to 7,000 people. The coliseum ground also has 4 outbuildings and a huge parking lot. It cover almost 622,000 square feet. Follow the money. By the way, who got the lighting contract for Southwest Unversity Park? That should be public record and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if a local company got the contract.
Niland Company would be my guess. This is a story in and of itself.