As he introduced the six-minute video touting the El Paso Downtown Plan, Bill Sanders quoted from urban planner Daniel Burnham, the legendary architect and principal author of Chicago's 1909 City Plan: "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die."
The El Paso Downtown Plan is no little matter. It contemplates lifestyle centers, arenas, displacement of thousands of residents, tax incentives, development of an arts corridor and mercado, a concept discussed since El Paso's first city plan, in 1925. It aims to take land that generated only $414,000 in property taxes last year -- "We should all be embarrassed," Sanders said of the weak values -- and turn it into a revenue generator for the city and an "economic driver" for the region. It aims to go forward to the past, when El Paso's Downtown was of national stature, and a regional heavyweight.
But first …
Sanders, an economic driver himself, being one of the top commercial real estate men in the nation, said the plan hinges on the involvement and courage of the City Council, particularly in aiding the assembly of large pieces of land.
“It is going to be very difficult for everyone in this room,” he said Friday (March 31) during the plan's unveiling in the Plaza Theatre, as he urged the Council to have courage in moving forward.
That's because it’s likely to involve eminent domain, a process by which governments can take private property for a public purpose. Generally, this means major infrastructure, such as roads, or schools. However, cities also have used the process to secure land for redevelopment in blighted neighborhoods.
The benefit is enhanced economic activity, which translates into jobs, tax base and other financial gains for the community. However, the flip side is that it also leads to displacement of residents, which critics have called "urban removal," a takeoff on the phrase urban renewal, often-used in the 1950s and '60s when inner cities were emptied and the residents packed into public housing or scattered throughout the community.
The plan shows two major districts Downtown. One is the Historic Incentive District, the other the Redevelopment District. The latter is where the battles over eminent domain will be fought.
The Plan calls for the city to create a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, called a TIRZ, for the Redevelopment District. The zone can do several things, chief among them using increments -- taxes collected on rising property values -- that are reinvested in the geographic area that produced the increment, and using eminent domain. [tirz background]
So, with a brief taste of the battles ahead, let's go back to the beginning of the story, and look at the plan's goals.
Opening the Jewel Box
Downtown El Paso has a storied history, both from a business and economic sense and from a cultural and social view. A banking and commercial center for the Southwest, hub of economic activity and home of significant 20th Century architecture, it also held an underground history of revolutionaries, artists and dreamers. In fact, 14 of the 25 buildings on the city of El Paso Website's self-guided walking tour are on the National Register of Historic Places. [walking tour]
"Our city was literally the envy of the Southwest," said Myrna Deckert, Chief Operating Officer of the Paso del Norte Group, a private civic leadership group that developed the plan. What happened since then, she said, "matters very little. … The time (to bring new energy) is now."
The plan covers 302.5 acres, of which 175 acres are designated as the Historic Incentive District, an area filled with beautiful, historic and mostly empty buildings.
"Imagine the beautiful Historic buildings in Downtown El Paso filled with offices, lofts, restaurants and outstanding new places to shop. Revitalized historic buildings, new development and gracious new parks are the setting for a downtown that is inviting and accessible to everyone," states the plan's fact book (page 3), given to the media at the plan unveiling. [fact book] [video]
Many of the historic buildings are empty, either in full or above the ground floor, which many building owners rent for retail while leaving the upstairs vacant. Some of the buildings are in such disrepair that they have been condemned. [npt article]
And over the years, plans have come and gone, causing some cynicism among property owners about the government’s effectiveness in spurring redevelopment. [npt review of downtown plans]
“I would like Downtown the way it was 50 years ago. That was wonderful but it will never be that way again,” said Larry Baron, one of the owners of Dave’s Pawn Shop, an iconic presence on El Paso Street. “I’ve been Downtown virtually every day for the past 50 years. You know how many people in the audience I knew? A handful. They weren’t Downtowners.”
His building is in the Historic District, where property owners in the area will be eligible for unspecified incentives, presumably to include some form of tax abatements. The TIRZ, and the issue of eminent domain, does not apply to this neighborhood. [map of zone]
Setting the Jewel
Most of those at the Plaza Theatre for the unveiling of the plan gave it thumbs up.
Mike Dipp, whose family owns the Plaza Hotel, said it was a great start. “We’re working right now on a plan to make the Plaza Hotel into condos,” said Dipp, who held out the possibility of announcing a project within six months.
Lawyer Jim Scherr, who owns the International Hotel and is seeking a deal with the city to help him develop it, said "it's excellent movement forward to help build the city. The details, I'm not familiar with." [international hotel background]
“There's a lot to be excited about. My job is to market El Paso. We needed a vibrant Downtown,” said Bob Cook, who directs the Regional Economic Development Corp. “REDCO will have something to sell. This appears on its face to be doable.”
Immediate past Mayor Joe Wardy, whose administration contracted with the PDNG for the plan, said “I'm excited about it. I know there's been lots of plans … I looked at half a dozen and they were incomplete. We lacked the financial mechanisms to go forward." He said one sign that this might work is the presence of major investors Downtown, Mimco, for example, and River Oaks. [mimco] [river oaks]
The city gave $250,000 toward the plan’s approximately $750,000 cost. Another third came from federal funds, and the PDNG raised the rest. It was the PDNG Downtown Redevelopment Task Force that oversaw the plan development.
Deckert, sensitive to the issue of conflicts of interest, emphasized that “Not one member of the task force owns one square inch of Downtown property.”
The PDNG, which includes most of El Paso’s business and civic leadership, as well as some regional leaders, quietly has gone about creating structures for dramatic change in the borderlands. For example, another initiative the group is pursuing is the Regional Mobility Authority, which holds the promise of quickly beefing up the transportation system. [rma background]
Sanders, who grew up in El Paso, made his mark in Chicago, and moved back to this region about three years ago, is one of the driving forces behind the PDNG. He said he considers the Downtown plan key to transforming the region from impoverished border to an economic and cultural magnet.
Who is the Jeweler?
The city’s role is key because the City Council has to approve of the plan and the implementation process -- including creating the TIRZ -- even though the Paso del Norte Group has created a non-profit agency named the 2010 Foundation to coordinate the implementation.
The Plan asks that the city:
-- Create a TIRZ
-- Establish an Office of Urban Redevelopment under the City Manager to work with the 2010 Foundation
-- Create seven task forces to “serve as a link between the community, business and civic leaders for information, execution and problem solving,” according to the plan fact book (page 8).
Another element to the plan is to create a Real Estate Investment Trust, a company that manages property. Property owners can contribute their property for shares in a REIT. [reit info]
March 31, the day the plan was released, the City Council voted to start a public hearing process to amend the city’s master plan to include the Downtown Plan. The timetable outlined in the fact book calls for the city to formally adopt the plan by July 1, and approve the project and financing plan for the TIRZ by Nov. 1.
Hard as a Diamond
Back to the TIRZ, and the battles ahead.
The Redevelopment District is where the economic “drivers,” the engines meant to power the transformation of Downtown, and the region, are located.
Those drivers include “lifestyle centers,” essentially urban malls that look like a village’s central district, and include offices and housing. [slate article] [las vegas lifestyle center]
Also in the Plan is an arena in Union Plaza, part of the Redevelopment District.
In whole, the area includes 33 single-family homes and 496 apartments, and the issue of displacement -- “urban renewal” -- comes up.
“I promise you we will respect the families that will be moved and we will help them find new housing,” said Sandra Almanzan, a key member of the team that developed the Plan and director of Fannie Mae’s Border Region Partnership Office.
Several years ago, controversy over the possible use of eminent domain derailed a plan to redevelop the area around Thomason and Texas Tech into a medical center complex. Opponents of then-Mayor Ray Caballero took advantage of the residents’ legitimate concerns to attack his programs, and a similar sequence of events is possible Downtown.
Community leader and La Fe CEO Salvador Balcorta could be instrumental in shaping the politics of the plan; a member of the Downtown Redevelopment Task Force, he was absent from the unveiling and unavailable for comment. [npt balcorta interview]
City Council member Beto O’Rourke, who represents Downtown, said that families were forced to leave the Alamito Housing project during reconstruction there, and that it was an emotional process. He asked during the Plan unveiling whether the Plan was flexible, or whether it could change based on community input. A meeting with neighborhoods Downtown and immediately adjacent is scheduled for the Armijo Recreation Center April 13.
"The plan is not down to the fire hydrant. It's a land use plan," said Steve Helbing, president of Wells Fargo in El Paso and another PDNG member who helped develop the plan.
O’Rourke, who is the son-in-law of Sanders, made the motion to begin the process of adopting the Plan, calling Downtown “one piece of El Paso that was missing on the road back to greatness." The vote was five in favor, with City Rep. Eddie Holguin abstaining, to some boos. After, Holguin said, "I wasn't ready to say yes. I'm halfway there. I want to know what incentives will be offered.” Reps. Presi Ortega and Melina Castro were both absent.
Baron, who will not face eminent domain, said when asked his thoughts of the plan, “I’d like to know who’s going to be pushed around.”
In the Redevelopment District
One of the places where people might be “pushed around” is a stretch of Downtown, along Mesa and Oregon from Paisano to the border, a neighborhood in transition for decades, as retail presses against it from both sides. The business atmosphere is ethnically diverse, with merchants and owners being Mexican, Korean, Chinese, Jewish, and Syrian-Lebanese. The residents in the hundreds of apartments are mostly Mexican and Mexican-American.
“The buildings are old. They will live better somewhere else,” said Cristina Estrada, 70, coming out of Sacred Heart Church on Sunday. She said she moved to El Paso from Juarez in 1969 and lived several blocks to the east of the church, which is on Oregon, in the Redevelopment Zone. Her home is outside the zone, she said. “We’re all waiting for this,” Estrada said.
Martha Arcos, 32, owner of Isamara’s Second Hand Store on Oregon, one block south of Paisano, said her grandmother, of Lebanese descent, owned the store building and an apartment next door. Arcos said she was in favor of “something being done here.”
However, she said, she’s not in favor of losing her business, once a home, to progress. “I grew up here, I went to school here, I lived in this house, and I want to keep it for my children,” Arcos said. “If they want to do something for the city, do it for the businesses that are here now.”
Carlos Rosas, a muralist who owns an apartment building at Oregon and Father Rahm, said people already have tried to buy his building, something Arcos said also happened to her.
“I’m like the Gaza Strip here,” Rosas said, referring to his neighborhood. “They don’t like it the way it is, and they want to kick me out and make it something for yuppies.”
When asked if he would like his neighborhood to change, he said yes. When asked if that was possible without some radical action, he said there were some simple things that could be done.
“In three generations,” he said, referring to the apartment building in which he and his mother live, “this street has never been paved.”
When asked whether he would sell his building for the right price, he said, “this is three generations here. I don’t want to leave.” Then he said, “That’s now, that doesn’t mean I can’t change my mind.”
* * *
Downtown Background
-- Feb. 22, 2004 CBA Director Mike Breitinger column on sidewalk sales [link]
-- June 13 story on past Downtown plans [link]
-- June 27 review of the 1925 El Paso Master Plan [link]
-- Aug. 8 review of the 1962 Master Plan update [link]
-- Aug. 22 PDNG contract review [link]
-- Sept. 19 story overview of Downtown [link]
-- Nov. 14 article on Caples and other neglected Downtown buildings [link]
-- Nov. 28 interview with David Dorado Romo [link]
-- Jan. 9 story on proposals for the International Hotel [link]
* * *
