Is Union Depot arena too small? City Council postpones vote to get community feedback

The El Paso City Council postponed a vote to approve the historic Union Depot site as the new location for the long-delayed multipurpose cultural and performing arts center this week in an effort to give El Pasoans more time to weigh in.

City Council was poised to approve a plan to construct a hybrid facility with 4,000 indoor seats and 4,000 outdoor seats at the Union Depot site, but city Rep. Isabel Salcido requested that the item be delayed for one month so council members could here from constituents on the plan.

"I just want to make sure we're not missing out on the public," Salcido said. "I wanted to see if we can have (those) community meetings before we look at this vote so they can get their questions answered."

The City Council unanimously agreed to the postponement, with city Rep. Cassandra Hernandez noting that more robust community involvement might keep the new plan from being "mired in controversy."

Between now and the March 12 City Council meeting, a handful of virtual meetings will be held and council members will review economic impact analysis on the project before giving it a final greenlight.

The anticlimactic decision was the last one made by the City Council on Tuesday, Feb. 13, after a marathon session that lasted nearly 10 hours.

Presenting a plan

City Lead Architect Daniela Quesada presented plans for the proposed Union Depot arena, which she said would be a "one-of-a-kind entertainment venue in the country."

Quesada said staff worked around the notion that the El Paso market was in need of a modern facility with a capacity between 8,000 and 12,000 seats, with initial community feedback indicating that residents wanted a space capable of integrating outdoors events and the existing urban contest.

Of the more than 1,500 survey responses Quesada received, more than half supported a space capable of hosting concerts, family shows, sporting events and "open-style" events.

Because the Union Depot site is already owned by the city, there is no cost associated with securing the land.

Of the four tenants currently housed at Union Depot, two have agreed to move their operations — Greyhound and First Transit — while Texas Tech and Amtrak would remain. A partnership with Amtrak, Quesada said, would mean that visitors could take a train directly to the new entertainment venue.

While there is no cost associated with securing the land, there is expected to be significant cost associated with cleaning the area and readying it for development. At least five underground fuel storage tanks are on the site, only one of which is still servicing buses, and will have to be removed, as well as various other chemicals, equipment, machinery and excavated soil.

The expected cost for the cleanup is between $600,000 and $2.7 million.

"The range is very large because we do not have a design," Quesada said. "Once we have a design ... we will be able to home in with more specificity."

The proposed timeline for the project, once the City Council approves the site, would see a final design within the city's remaining $162 million budget by winter, though shovels won't hit the ground until 2026.

'We deserve a 14,000-seat arena'

While the plan seems to hit all the markers the earlier Duranguito site did not and falls within the 2012 voter-approved budget, there was still concern over the plan.

For El Paso city Rep. Art Fierro, the proposed project falls short of what voters demanded more than 10 years ago.

"I think we deserve a 14,000-seat arena," Fierro said.

But a 14,000-seat venue would cost somewhere between $500 million and $600 million, well beyond what the city has on hand to see the project through.

"Even though the taxpayers were told they would get a 14,000-seat facility ... it was never budgeted properly ... so I think the taxpayers overwhelmingly approved an MPC which is a performing arts center and we do need to listen to the voters and do the will of the voters and do what they voted for," Mayor Oscar Leeser said. "There has been a lot of talk back and forth for 11 years on what really that language was and what happened and what didn't happen, but at the end of the day ... we had $180 million."

"We are obligated to the taxpayers," he added.

Fierro was far from the only person to express dismay over the proposal. In a letter to council members and local reporters this week, former City Manager Joyce Wilson expressed a similar sentiment.

"Ten years ago the community envisioned a facility with (a) minimum of 14,000 seats," Wilson wrote. "Anything else is like flushing money down the toilet, which (City Council has) been good at frankly."

"The multipurpose center was intended to accommodate college and amateur sports as well as much," she added. "That why it's called multipurpose. Duh."

The smaller venue does raise questions about whether the new space would be able to recruit big-name musical acts, especially considering that the El Paso Convention Center boasts the same capacity — 8,000 seats — as the proposed MPC.

Additionally, the new venue would only hold about 1,500 more people than the El Paso County Coliseum.

"If you don't have guts to do something grand, then just do nothing," Wilson wrote. "This is pretty sad."

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Not so fast: El Paso City Council delays vote to set new arena site