(C) El Paso Matters.org
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El Paso City Council kicks in $750,000 to advance Downtown deck park [1]
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Date: 2024-09-25
The El Paso City Council on Tuesday agreed to chip in $750,000 to advance the Downtown deck park one step further – but the path toward actually building the project is long and murky.
City Council approved the contribution by a 5-2 vote one month after El Paso County Commissioners Court decided to contribute $1 million of county funds to the deck park.
“This is really our opportunity to leave our mark,” District 5 city Rep. Art Fierro said. “This Downtown deck park is going to be a game-changer for Downtown El Paso.”
The deck park is estimated to cost at least $207 million to build. It would sit atop a capped Interstate 10 in Downtown and span five blocks, from Santa Fe Street east to Kansas Street, and feature numerous amenities such as an event space, a dog park and gardens.
Here’s why the city and county are putting up that money: The El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization – along with a local foundation backing the project – is applying for a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation that would pay for detailed construction designs.
In order to win the federal Reconnecting Communities grant, local governments within El Paso County have to put up at least $5 million in matching funds. The MPO is contributing $3.75 million, plus the $750,000 from the city and the $1 million from the county. Private donors are contributing another $250,000 through the Downtown Deck Plaza Foundation created by the Paso del Norte Community Foundation to promote the deck park.
The grant application is due by Sept. 30, and USDOT will likely announce grant recipients in January.
The big question of how to pay for construction is still unanswered. But the thinking for now is that the deck park’s backers will seek the federal grant that will provide cash to develop construction blueprints. Once those designs are complete, construction could start as soon as more money becomes available – such as another federal grant or some other source.
Having blueprints ready will make it a lot more likely for the project to win other grants, said Joaquin Rodriguez, the city’s director of grant funded programs.
“It’s incredibly difficult to apply for construction grant funding without construction documents ready to go,” he said.
Karina Brasgala of the city of El Paso’s Economic and International Development Department answers questions about the Downtown deck plaza proposal during a community meeting, July 30, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
The deck park has picked up momentum and supporters over the last couple of months. District 4 city Rep. Joe Molinar said he doesn’t support the project; while District 8 city Rep. Chris Canales also voted against the contribution, saying he disagreed over which pot of money the city should pull the funds from.
City Rep. Cassandra Hernandez wasn’t present when the council discussed the deck plaza. Mayor Oscar Leeser, who only votes to break ties, also was not present for the discussion. Four of five commissioners last month voted to contribute matching funds for the deck park, with Precinct 3 County Commissioner Iliana Holguin voting against it.
Repair, widening of I-10 Downtown moves forward
If it goes forward, the deck park would be built around the same time as a planned repair and widening of Interstate 10 in Downtown by the Texas Department of Transportation. The state commission that governs TxDOT last month approved $500 million for the I-10 work, making it all but guaranteed to happen.
TxDOT’s planned addition of a new lane to I-10 is fairly controversial; it will likely put more cars on the road and create more air pollution in the heart of El Paso, and also potentially require the acquisition and demolition of properties along Yandell Drive. The I-10 widening also runs counter to the city’s goals of creating a more dense, walkable community that’s less sprawling and car-dependent.
However, the MPO’s executive director has said pavement repairs and updates to that stretch of interstate are badly needed. And TxDOT’s computer models predict traffic will become much worse in that part of the highway in the coming decades, as El Paso grows and spreads out further.
TxDOT expects to begin soliciting bids next summer.
“TxDOT has the funding to move forward,” Rodriguez said. “They are in the middle of that environmental process. It is likely that at the end of that process, they will be moving forward with construction.”
Will local taxpayers shoulder the cost?
The idea of using local taxpayer dollars to fund construction of the deck park is unpopular among many local elected officials, from the city and county.
“I, personally, don’t support the use of local taxpayer dollars for the eventual construction of this project,” said Canales, who represents the area where the deck plaza would be located.
But council representatives said the deck park is an opportunity to energize the city’s core, and providing the $750,000 towards it doesn’t mean the city has to go through with the project if it’s too expensive or infeasible.
“How do we know that it won’t be paid for with federal funds?” District 1 city Rep. Brian Kennedy asked during the City Council meeting Tuesday.
“I think that it makes a great amount of sense to move this project further down the road, and get ready for the potential for grant money, which comes from other pockets, other than our taxpayers,” he said.
TxDOT would technically own the deck park if it’s built. But the Deck Plaza Foundation wants El Paso County to “sponsor” the project, which would be similar to ownership in practice. It’s not clear why the county would sponsor the deck park instead of the city; Tracy Yellen, CEO of the Paso del Norte Foundation, said her group hasn’t had conversations with the city about sponsorship.
TxDOT “are currently the owners of I-10,” Eduardo Calvo, executive director of the MPO, told County Commissioners Court on Monday.
“They’re not interested in building decks,” Calvo said. “So, somebody else has to take over the responsibilities. And that’s where the sponsorship comes in. The project sponsor is almost as if you’re the owner.”
Commissioner Holguin has voiced skepticism of the deck park for months, and voted in August against the county contributing $1 million toward it.
Holguin, who is the treasurer for Kennedy’s mayoral campaign, has said she’s concerned about the potential risks to the county of sponsorship, and whether the county would be on the hook for paying for the project.
“The city, clearly, is not interested in ownership,” Holguin said Monday.
El Paso County could assign the responsibility of operating and maintaining the park to the Deck Plaza Foundation.
“That contractual arrangement between the county and the park foundation would be the opportunity to define what the county’s role (is), how much you want to delegate,” Yellen said.
The city of Dallas is the sponsor of the Klyde Warren deck park – which backers here view as a model for the project in El Paso – but a private foundation operates and maintains the site with its own funding.
The cost to operate and maintain the Klyde Warren Park in downtown Dallas was $760,000 last year. The total annual expenses for the park and the surrounding arts district – including administration, programming, security and insurance – were $1.7 million last year.
Skeptics cite a range of potential problems with the deck park, such as limited parking around the area it would be located, and the potential for a major, years-long disruption of traffic on I-10 from its construction. There’s also the risk that the actual construction cost balloons far past $207 million.
Supporters want to move as fast as possible to develop the deck plaza so that work on that coincides with TxDOT’s construction work on I-10. TxDOT has said it will build the retaining walls that will bear the weight of the deck.
Yellen said winning the federal grant her group is seeking will help produce a sharper cost estimate than the initial projection unveiled in July.
“The benefit of taking this next step in the construction process is we get even greater clarity of what the estimate, at least of the deck portion, will be,” Yellen told El Paso Matters. The following step, she said, would be studying more closely the cost to build the amenities atop the deck.
“We certainly don’t want to be in the business of underestimating project costs,” she said.
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[1] Url:
https://elpasomatters.org/2024/09/25/deck-park-downtown-el-paso-city-council-cost-design/
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