Buzzy's baseball stadium entry

[buzzy]

This entry is massive compared to most of my entries, and took five days to put together. Semagic says it has 4,725 words. It details what I know about the baseball stadium plans in El Paso. It's separated into several sections as I tried to organize my thoughts, and includes some source material, referenced in a way similar to how Wikipedia does. And with that, here's the entry.

Table of Contents

1. Building the Ballpark, Soccer Stadium, and Arena
   1. The Hotel Occupancy Tax
2. Justification
   1. Why Not ________?
3. My Opinion
4. Appendix: Cost of Renovating City Hall
5. Sources

Building the Ballpark, Soccer Stadium, and Arena

According to the preferred alternative^{[4, slide 33]}, the following buildings/properties would be lost or would have to move to accommodate the ballpark and arena: the Greyhound bus maintenance facility (to accommodate a new museum), the Greyhound terminal (to accommodate the arena), Lynx Exhibits (to accommodate future development), the Insights Science Museum^[5] and current City Hall (to accommodate the ballpark), the Abraham Chavez theatre (for the Arena), and the El Paso Chamber of Commerce/Visitor Information Center (as a future hotel site). Lynx and Insights could merge to go to the new museum site. The soccer arena would displace a few buildings along Paisano including some bus terminals for regional bus lines and the El Paso Art Association. Most of the area the soccer arena will inhabit would include some unsightly railyards. Obviously, the only ones that are in immediate danger of being demolished are Insights and the City Hall.

They mention that there are 4,322 parking spaces within a five minute walk of the Convention Center (and thus, roughly the arena and ballpark).^{[4, slide 34]} If there's a sell-out crowd, and all that parking is used, an average of three people would have to be in each car. You can't rely on public transportation because it stops running around the time most sporting events end. I suppose if a large number of people from nearby Sunset Heights walk over, it might work. They also have plans to build a parking garage next to the stadium that would add 120 spaces per floor. I can only imagine how expensive parking will be when those lots are used for sporting events and not just visiting museums, theatres, and the library. (This wouldn't affect me though, since my dad has a monthly pass to the somewhat nearby Wells Fargo building garage which he uses to park for work.)

There isn't a preferred alternative for where to put the City Hall and Development Services, but all of the proposals look like they'll go where there's something that exists. Using Google Maps to find where the spots in their three options are (kinda hard, since the maps are oriented differently): the monthly parking lot adjacent to San Jacinto Plaza in option 1^{[4, slide 38]}, the O.T. Bassett Tower in option 2^{[4, slide 39]} (I would assume this would be a remodel instead of a teardown and rebuild since it's on the National Register of Historic Places), or the Central Regional Command of the El Paso Police Department in option 3^{[4, slide 40]}, and the entire block with the crumbling Kress building in all options for the Development Services.

The stadium itself will have 7000-9000 seats (fixed and berm), 20-30 luxury suites for whoever can afford it, 250-500 club seats for whoever can afford it, office space for the team, and a team store.^{[4, slide 71]} It can't cost any more than $50M^{[4, slide 68]} (though the city general fund/property taxpayers will be responsible for overruns^{[4, slide 69]}), will be mainly paid for by hotel occupancy taxes (HOT) (or the general fund if voters turn down the HOT hike), and should open by the start of the 2014 season^{[4, slide 72]}. The Diablos (the existing AA team) will be allowed to operate at the same time as the AAA team until their lease runs out and they won't be allowed to renew their lease when it ends on April 16, 2016. The city also isn't allowed to "develop, finance, or facilitate the development" of anything that could potentially compete with the stadium, with that restriction left open for a potential Major League Soccer stadium.^{[4, slide 73]} The team has to promise to stay 25 years and can extend that contract in five-year increments up to three times (so 40 years total). During the initial 25-year period, the team can't move.^{[4, slide 74]} I suppose if they fold, there's nothing the city can do about that. The team will pay $5M in rent to the city, with about $3.6M (or three-quarters of the rent starting on the second year) going to maintain the stadium itself.^{[4, slide 77]}. All events at the stadium will have a $0.10 surcharge that goes to the city.^{[4, slide 78]} The team gets to control advertising, naming rights, vendors, and merchandise^{[4, slide 79]}, but the team has to be responsible for maintenance.^{[4, slide 81]} The stadium doesn't have to pay property taxes, but the team has to provide "affordable" programs.^{[4, slide 86]}

It looks like the city wants to move to the 73,667 ft² Luther Building as a temporary city hall. To move, it'll take $2M-3M to relocate the 650 employees in the current City Hall. The temporary rental will cost about $3.5M from the general fund.^{[4, slide 93]} I'm guessing that the slide about the lease of the Luther Building would mean the city would put in nearly $14M in repairs to buy the building and $1.4M if they rent it; maybe both the $14M and $1.4M are both going to be paid.^{[4, slide 94]} In addition the Insights Museum lease being terminated, the Community Garden (I didn't know we had a community garden) would also have their lease terminated. All city-owned parking lots in the area would be devoted to the stadium.^{[4, slide 95]} To pay for it, they propose three alternatives, with the third being the one they obviously went for:

1. General obligation bonds supported 100% by property taxes (Downside: Taxpayers probably won't go for it)^{[4, slide 97]}
2. Lease revenue bonds supported by TIRZ and DMD, ticket surcharges, owner rental payments, and general fund (Downside: Requires the city to create a local government corporation to lease the stadium to the city who would lease it to the team)^{[4, slide 98]}
3. 2% increase in Hotel Occupancy Tax approved by voters, ticket surcharge, rent from team, general fund (Downside: Property tax money can't ever be used unless voters approve it separately)^{[4, slide 99]}

If the third option happens, the city estimates an annual payment on the debt of $3.7M ($2.6M from the Hotel Occupancy Tax, $40K from the ticket surcharge, $50K from rent from year two and onward [$250K for the first year], the rest from general revenue).^{[4, slide 100]}

The schedule of construction looks like this: the design phase will run from now to February 2013, the procurement phase (I guess getting the stuff they need to build) runs from November 2012 to March 2013, the demolition phase runs from January to February 2013, with construction running from March 2013 to April 2014.^[15] I assume they intend to complete the ballpark in time for the start of the 2014 season.

The Hotel Occupancy Tax

The current Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT) for El Paso is 15.5%. 6% goes to the state, 2.5% goes to the county, and 7% goes to the city. A large chunk of the county's take goes to the maintenance of the County Coliseum (over 2%, or over 80% of the total they get), and by extension, the neighboring Events Center, previously known as the Equestrian Center. The city's take is split with 4.5% going to destination marketing (tourism) and facility operations (not sure which facilities are included). 2.5% of the city's take goes to debt service. The proposed 2% increase would go entirely to the ballpark. (If they decide to go ahead with the building of the arena where the Abraham Chavez Theatre is currently and/or the MLS stadium by Paisano, I don't think it'd be a good idea to jack up the HOT even more.) While the HOT would be the highest in the state, because rooms don't cost as much here as they do in the rest of the state, the total room price won't be as high as it would be in the rest of the state.^[7] The local hotel/motel association is fuming over this, saying they'll be burdened with the highest tax in the state. The hotels also don't like the idea of dealing with irate customers complaining about how high the tax is either. (When I would travel, I would book in advance, and would usually go to a place on the basis of total price. I'd usually see the room tax, but I knew the place I was staying didn't set that, so there's no use in taking it out on the hotel staff.) Although its anecdotal, at least one hotel/motel operator in Tucson, which has the team El Paso is eyeing, the baseball team has not impacted the number of people staying at their hotel.^[8] I'm guessing a big, but unspoken, reason the hotel/motel association doesn't care for this is that to remain competitive with hotels and motels going up in neighboring cities (e.g., Anthony) or unincorporated areas, the room rate would have to go down slightly for rooms booked in advance. For people not booking in advance, they're already screwed by high room rates, so an extra 2% is not going to be noticeable. The tax only pays for 72% of the cost, with the rest coming from increased fees, ticket surcharges, and general fund revenues.^[6]

Justification

To justify the city pushing so hard for this team and arena, one of the things they did was compare El Paso to several other cities in what they call a "Comparison-Benchmark Study".^{[4, slides 44-46]} At first I thought they were cities with roughly similar total population, but they skipped a quite a few cities. The largest city they picked was Austin (the 13th largest city in the U.S.) and the smallest was Mesa, Arizona (the 38th largest city), though Mesa is part of the much larger Phoenix metro area, and Austin is part of the smaller Austin–Round Rock–San Marcos metro area. The cities they picked certainly aren't demographically similar, especially with regard to race and ethnicity. Since they compare all the cities of this study only with regard to baseball, I'll do a comparison with baseball and a few other sports. The following tables are information gleaned from Wikipedia, so take it for what it's worth, but it's probably the easiest place for me to grab information about current sports teams in an area. I changed the population shown to be the 2011 estimates and added the metro population for comparison:

City	Population (2011)			Metro Pop. (2011)		Baseball	Hockey	Basketball	Soccer	Football
	Total	Rank	PC Inc.[11]	Total	Rank
Austin, TX	820,611	13th	$30,286	1,783,519	34th	AAA*	AAA	NBADL	None	College
Fort Worth, TX	758,738	16th	$23,792	6,526,548	4th	AA, Major*	Major*, AA*	College, major*	Major*	College, major*
Charlotte, NC	751,087	17th	$30,984	1,795,472	33rd	AAA*	AAA	Major	Div. III	Major
El Paso, TX***	665,568	19th	$17,812	820,970	65th	AA	Junior A-I	University	Amateur	University
Memphis, TN	652,050	20th	$21,007	1,325,605	41st	AAA	AA*	Major, College	None	College, Amateur
Las Vegas, NV	589,317	31st	$26,993	1,969,975	30th	AAA	AA	None	PASL	UFL
Oklahoma City, OK	591,967	30th	$25,042	1,278,053	41st	AAA	AAA	Major	Women's	None
Albuquerque, NM	552,804	32nd	$25,819	898,642	57th	AAA	Junior A-II	University	None	University
Tucson, AZ	525,796	33rd	$20,243	989,569	52nd	AAA**	University	University	None	University
Mesa, AZ	446,518	38th	$24,647	4,262,236	14th	Major*	Major*	Major*	PASL*/NPSL*	Major*

* Team plays in another city in the metropolitan area.
** Note that Tucson having a AAA baseball team was a temporary arrangement. They were moved to Tucson temporarily while their stadium in Escondido, CA was being built, but legal problems derailed the stadium, so ownership is iffy. This is the team El Paso is trying to lure with the downtown arena.
*** Note that the El Paso MSA doesn't include Las Cruces, NM (213,598 or 199th place) or Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico (1,321,004 or 7th place in Mexico).
 

Just from looking at that collected data, El Paso is not only being compared to cities of similar size, but also to metro areas ranging from 9-794% larger. (Though the numbers change if you include Las Cruces, NM, which would raise the metro population to 1,034,568 or between Rochester, NY and Tucson, AZ. I'm not including Juarez because not everyone from there can get here.) A comparison of El Paso to Mesa, Arizona or Fort Worth isn't fair at all. They're both joined to much larger metro areas, which would allow them to support a wider variety of sports at higher levels. (Seven cities on their list have AAA teams and seven cities have hockey at AA-level or higher; I don't see anyone trying to get us even an A-level hockey team the way they're clamoring for the baseball team.) Even then, look at the per capita incomes for all the cities. El Paso is dead last. Tucson is second-to-last, but their team, at 34-59, has an average attendance during the past five home games (July 2-3, 12-14) was 4275, though that includes a game with a large attendance on July 3. Not counting that, the average attendance is only 2679, including Friday and Saturday games.^[13] Third-to-last is Memphis, and the past five home games (July 4-8) had an average attendance of 7136, though that also included a huge turnout for July 4.^[12] Their record is 35-60, which makes them worst in their division. I'll take the combined El Paso-Las Cruces population and do the same chart by metro areas around the same size as the El Paso-Las Cruces area:

Metro Area	Metro Pop. (2011)		Baseball	Hockey	Basketball	Soccer	Football
	Total	Rank
Raleigh-Cary, NC	1,163,515	47th	AAA	Major	University	University	University
Salt Lake City, UT	1,145,905	48th	AAA	AA	Major	Major	University
Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY	1,134,039	49th	AAA	Major	None	NPSL	Major
Birmingham-Hoover, AL	1,132,264	50th	AA	None	University	Amateur	University
Rochester, NY	1,055,278	51st	AAA	AAA	PBL	Div. III	Major*
El Paso, TX-Las Cruces, NM	1,034,568	52nd**	AA	Junior A-I	University	Amateur	University
Tucson, AZ	989,569	53rd**	AAA***	University	University	None	University
Honolulu, HI	963,607	54th**	University	None	University	None	University
Tulsa, OK	946,962	55th**	AA	AA	NBADL	PASL	Semi-Pro
Fresno, CA	942,904	56th**	AAA	Junior A-II	Semi-Pro	Amateur	AFL1
Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT	925,889	57th**	ALPB	AAA/A	University	None	None

* Team outside metro area
** This number assumes El Paso and Las Cruces are combined into one statistical area. El Paso is really at 65th, Las Cruces is at 199th, and all other cities with two asterisks are one place lower than indicated.
*** See the description under ** under the previous table.
 

Actually, taken this way, it looks like most everyone else has AAA baseball too. Seven (again) out of the ten cities above and below El Paso/Las Cruces's population have AAA baseball or an equivalent. It actually looks like we need to at least get a pro hockey team here too. There's two NHL teams, two AHL teams, an ECHL, and CHL team all in there, so six out of those ten have pro hockey of some kind. Fresno's junior team is at a higher level than El Paso's. I don't know much about the University of Arizona Wildcats hockey team. I know that Honolulu will probably never have a hockey team (travel expense and expense of maintaining ice are two reasons) and if you want hockey in Birmingham, Alabama, you have to drive to Huntsville to watch the Havoc of the SPHL. Now let's do it without including the population of Las Cruces:

Metro Area	Metro Pop. (2011)		Baseball	Hockey	Basketball	Soccer	Football
	Total	Rank
New Haven-Milford, CT	861,113	60th	None	University	University	University	University
Bakersfield-Delano, CA	851,710	61st	A	AA	NBADL	University	Comm. College
Dayton, OH	845,388	62nd	A	A	PBL	Amateur	CIFL
Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA	831,771	63rd	University	None	University	Amateur	University
Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ	824,916	64th	AAA	AAA in Fall 2013	None	A	IFL
El Paso, TX	820,970	65th	AA	Junior A-I	University	Amateur	University
Baton Rouge, LA	808,242	66th	University	None	University	Amateur	University
Worcester, MA	801,227	67th	A	AAA	University	University	CIFL
McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX	797,810	68th	2x NAL	Junior A-II	NBADL	Amateur	LSFL
Grand Rapids-Wyoming, MI	779,604	69th	A	AAA	Semi-Pro	None	IFL
Columbia, SC	777,116	70th	University	AA Suspended	University	University	University

If we use the cities around El Paso in terms of the size of the metro area (not counting Las Cruces), one couldn't make the "everybody else is doing it" argument for AAA baseball. Only one city has AAA baseball, and everyone else has lower levels of baseball than El Paso. There's more AAA hockey teams than baseball teams in this list. Again, no one is making the argument that we should roll out the red carpet for the AHL and demolish sections of downtown to accommodate them. Anyway, another justification is that the metro population is within the range of AAA baseball: 425,417-3,439,809 (median 1,283,054).^{[4, slide 47]} On the same slide, they show the range of ballpark capacities: 9,023 (Papillion, NE)-15,411 (Salt Lake City, UT) (median 11,351). Cohen Stadium's capacity is 9,725, which is on the low end, but within the range. There's a rather long list of reasons MiLB doesn't like Cohen.^{[6, pp. 2-3]} One of the ways they show that it can succeed is by saying that the 26-34 and 35-54 year old demographics are more likely to attend games, and 68% of the population is 44 or younger.^{[4, slide 48]} They then proceed to show some ticket prices from other teams: The hope-they-allow-binoculars-seats at $6-8.25 per ticket and various other seating arrangements based on stadium design at $9-25 per ticket.^{[4, slide 49]} Whether the affordable seats will be useful will depend on the design of the stadium and options. They then estimate that 611.7 jobs (with people earning about $22.7M) will be created as a result of the construction of the stadium.^{[4, slide 53]}. Those jobs go away as soon as the project is finished. The $50M price tag of the stadium mentioned doesn't include the demolition of the old City Hall and the Insights Museum, nor does it include the new museum that will be built across the street (the potential Lynx Exhibits/Insights Science Museum combination?). This will likely jack up the property values for everyone in the general vicinity, which will mean that everyone who is getting hit with a $5-10 increase in property taxes to pay for the demolition and relocation of City Hall will get an even larger increase. Later, there's an estimate that the ballpark will average an attendance of 6,152 per game, which would generate nearly $18M per year.^{[4, slide 57]} The figures for how much money will be generated by the stadium are based on averages from other places, and no study has been done for what the effect would be on El Paso.^[9]

Why Not ________?

Although Cohen Stadium has a capacity that is within the range for Minor League Baseball, MiLB doesn't like it for several reasons^[6][9]:

• They want it downtown
• They want it new and built just for them
• "Limited seating options"
• Not enough room for food that's more expensive than pizza, burgers, or hot dogs
• Not enough restrooms (but that's true for every arena and stadium...try going to pee in between innings/quarters/periods)
• Not enough suites/club spaces
• No meeting space/lounge
• They don't like the locker rooms, physical conditioning area, player rehabilitation area, or the administrative office space
• They don't think the stadium offers enough ways for them to make money

MiLB doesn't think all the renovating in the world will make them like Cohen. So after 2016 it will remain unused and the $750,000 in renovations the Tiguas put into it were all for nought. I imagine that the Tiguas will only do the bare minimum maintenance from this point on, since there's no reason to bother.

Another place that can't be used is the old Asarco land. The reason for this is obvious to anyone driving by that area: It's not done being demolished...They even have to replace the dirt in that area, and it won't be ready for a new use until at least 2015.^[9] Add a year to build a stadium and the team wouldn't be able to play until 2016 or so. MiLB doesn't sound very patient, as they wouldn't even wait for the voters to have a say.^[10]

My Opinion

My opinion is sprinkled throughout this entry, but I'll sum things up here. For one, I think this could be good for the city, but I'm not expecting it to make the city suddenly turn to a place that companies want to relocate to simply because we have a team. The city gets its basketball and football fixes through UTEP, its soccer fix through the PDL Patriots, and baseball through the AA Diablos. Only the Diablos are a professional team. But with our $17,812 per capita income (2010)^[11], can people actually afford to go? I had mentioned above that the attendance for Tucson was lackluster if you don't count the July 3 game, which I assume had a fireworks display. Tucson has a 13.6% higher per capita income than El Paso. Considering Tucson's team is dead last in the league^[14], and assuming that poor performance will carry on wherever they go, El Paso could quickly shun them if El Paso continues its tradition of fair weather fans. Putting aside the question of whether people come, there's also the economic impact.

The stated estimated economic impact of the ballpark is nearly $18M per year, assuming an average attendance of 6,152, 71 home games per season, an average ticket price of $10, and an average spending per attendee of $31.17.^{[4, slide 57]} That $31.17 assumes that people are buying drinks, food, and stuff from the team store. I thought I saw information on indirect spending, including stuff such as people eating at restaurants in the area, but I can't find that anymore. We'll have to assume that a certain number of people will spend money getting dinner or lunch at restaurants on the outside. People will be paying for parking at various places. This sounds fine, but this is all money that the northeast will lose with baseball basically being moved from Cohen to the new stadium. People will no longer eat at the restaurants along Trans Mountain or stop by the Walmart. (That area is already reeling from the road construction going on.) So between the northeast and downtown, this is a zero-sum game. Downtown gets a baseball stadium, and the northeast gets another vacant building. Everyone from the northeast already has to drive to the west side or the east side to do anything, so it was nice having Cohen on the northeast so people would actually drive to the northeast instead of somewhere else. With Cohen becoming a stadium for random events like monster truck rallies and concerts (if the MiLB contract allows it), it will be rare that there's anything to do in the northeast. Anything you can do in the northeast, you can do on the far east side or west side, and probably better. Now the northeast will just be the section of town you have to pass through when going from the west side to the far east side. This is probably a big reason that northeast city representative Carl Robinson voted against the stadium resolution.

I guess to summarize, I'd prefer if they didn't, but am hopeful that if everything does happen that it will indeed benefit the whole city and not just a handful of people operating only in a small section of town. I guess I could always hope that the El Paso MiLB baseball team spins off a professional hockey team, like the Toledo Mud Hens ownership also owns the ECHL Toledo Walleye. (The Walleye mascot shows up at the baseball games!) Also, if El Paso has to get a triple-A team, I hope they at least have a decent logo and name. I know it's part of the contract that El Paso has to be in the name, but I hope they drop the Padres name and make it something a little more local. I don't care for baseball (they always play when it's hot), and I probably will never attend a game, but I'll be holding out for this to maybe be the first domino to fall to bring us the rest of the sports at a professional level. *cough*Hockey*cough*

Appendix: Cost of Renovating City Hall

The city makes the cost of remodeling the existing building sound about as high as getting a new building or refurbishing an existing one, since they usually quote the highest price (the Basic + Green Improvements shown below) as the cost for remodeling City Hall.^{[6, p. 3][10]} The new City Hall price would be as much as $38.5M if they remodel an existing building^[6].

• New 500-space Parking Garage^[1]: $11,256,737
  • Design Fees: $1,092,105
    • Lab Investigation (As far as I know, it's just a flat parking lot now) (0.2%): $17,903
    • Mechanical/Electrical Design (1.5%): $134,275
    • Engineering/Architectural Design (10.5%): $939,926
  • Project Engineering: $80,565
  • Construction Cost: $8,951,680
    • Construction Mobilization (3%): $258,844
    • Protection of Existing Site (0.25%): $21,570
    • Shift Work Requirements (0.5%): $43,141
  • Construction Contingencies: $1,132,387
    • Inspection (0.4%): $35,807
    • Testing Cost (0.25%): $22,379
    • Public Arts Fee (2%): $179,034 (?)
    • Contingency: $895,168 (10% of the construction cost for overruns)
• Basic Improvements^[2] "replacing all exterior windows, replacing fire alarm system, replacing all air handler units with outside dampers, replacing sanitary and water distribution lines, and replacing elevator motors and controls.": $11,859,568
  • Design Fees: $1,003,116
    • Lab Investigation (Include Asbestos Assessment) (1%): $91,192
    • Mechanical/Electrical Design (1.5%): $136,789
    • Engineering/Architectural Design (8.5%): $775,135
  • Project Engineering (0.9%): $82,073
  • Construction Cost: $9,119,237
    • New Windows: $3,953,640
      • Window Removal (1568 @ $130 each): $203,840
      • Hoist Rental (4 months @ $15,000/month): $60,000
      • New Windows (5'x4') (828 @ $1,600 each): $1,324,800
      • New Windows (9'x4') (740 @ $2,750 each): $2,035,000
      • Scaffolding: $330,000
    • Roof & Stucco Repair: $18,000
    • Mechanical: $2,443,040
      • Sewer Distribution (132 @ $5,000 each): $660,000
      • Water Distribution (176000 @ $0.54/ft²): $95,040
      • Air Handler Units (22 @ $25,000 each): $550,000
      • Outside/Inside Dampers (22 @ $4,000 each): $88,000
      • Elevator Equipment (6 @ $175,000 each): $1,050,000
    • Plaza Improvements: $1,250,000
      • Entry Improvements: $750,000
      • Plaza Improvements: $500,000
    • Security and Fire Alarm upgrades: $1,144,000
      • Fire Alarms (176,000 @ $6.50 each): $1,144,000
    • Construction Mobilization (3%): $264,260
    • Protection of Existing Site (0.25%): $22,022
    • Shift Work Requirements (0.5%): $24,275
  • Construction Contingencies: $1,655,142
    • Inspection (0.9%): $82,073
    • Testing Fee (0.25%): $22,798
    • Public Arts Fee (2%): $182,385 (?)
    • Contingency (15%): $1,367,886
• Basic + Green Improvements^[3] All the Basic improvements above and "painting, wind tunnel, louvers, new phone system, and energy management systems": $30,478,209
  • Design Fees: $2,414,584
    • Lab Investigation (Include Asbestos Assessment) (0.2%): $47,345
    • Mechanical/Electrical Design (1.5%): $355,086
    • Engineering/Architectural Design (8.5%): $2,012,154
  • Project Engineering (0.9%): $213,052
  • Construction Cost: $23,672,395
    • New Windows: $3,953,640
      • Window Removal (1568 @ $130 each): $203,840
      • Hoist Rental (4 months @ $15,000/month): $60,000
      • New Windows (5'x4') (828 @ $1,600 each): $1,324,800
      • New Windows (9'x4') (740 @ $2,750 each): $2,035,000
      • Scaffolding: $330,000
    • Green Element: $15,343,140
      • Energy Management: $1,000,000
      • Solar Energy (176,000 ft² @ $12.34/ft²): $2,171,840
      • Exterior Paint (132,000 ft² @ $2.74/ft²): $363,000
      • Telephone System (1000 people @ $700/person): $700,000
      • Interior Surface/Exterior Wall Paint (528000 ft² @ $1.50/ft²): $792,000
      • Restroom Fixtures (132 @ $500 each): $66,000
      • Restroom Partitions (92 @ $1525 each): $140,300
      • Louvers (132000 ft² @ $42.50/ft²): $5,610,000
      • Wind Tunnel: $4,500,000
    • Roof & Stucco Repair: $18,000
    • Mechanical: $2,377,040
      • Sewer Distribution (132 @ $4,500 each): $594,000
      • Water Distribution (176000 @ $0.54/ft²): $95,040
      • Air Handler Units (22 @ $25,000 each): $550,000
      • Outside/Inside Dampers (22 @ $4,000 each): $88,000
      • Elevator Equipment (6 @ $175,000 each): $1,050,000
    • Security and Fire Alarm upgrades: $1,144,000
      • Fire Alarms (176,000 @ $6.50 each): $1,144,000
    • Construction Mobilization (3%): $685,075
    • Protection of Existing Site (0.25%): $57,090
    • Shift Work Requirements (0.5%): $94,411
  • Construction Contingencies: $4,178,178
    • Inspection (0.4%): $94,690
    • Testing Cost (0.25%): $59,181
    • Public Arts Fee (2%): $473,448
    • Contingency (15%): $3,550,859

Sources

These aren't fancy standard citations. The numbers correspond to the superscript numbers above, kind of like Wikipedia.

1. Reyes, Javier (June 21, 2012), New Parking Garage at City Hall, City of El Paso, retrieved July 12, 2012.
2. Reyes, Javier (June 21, 2012), City Hall Basic Improvements, City of El Paso, retrieved July 12, 2012.
3. Reyes, Javier (June 21, 2012), City Hall Basic & Green Improvements, City of El Paso, retrieved July 12, 2012.
4. City of El Paso (June 26, 2012), Triple-A Baseball in El Paso, Texas, City of El Paso, retrieved July 13, 2012.
5. Hernandez, Cathy (July 13, 2012), Future Uncertain for Insights Museum, KTSM, retrieved July 13, 2012.
6. City of El Paso, Downtown Ballpark Fact Sheet, City of El Paso, retrieved July 11, 2012.
7. City of El Paso, Term Sheet and Facts of Hotel Occupancy Tax Rate - Attachment 2, City of El Paso, retrieved July 17, 2012.
8. Bracamontes, Aaron (July 15, 2012), Hotel Tax to help pay for El Paso ballpark fuels debate, El Paso Times, p.1A/7A
9. Ramirez, Cindy (July 15, 2012), Times Q&A: Proposed stadium for Downtown El Paso raises many questions, El Paso Times, p.7A
10. Ortega, Steve (July 12, 2012), City Rep. Steve Ortega answers frequently asked questions about ballpark, KVIA-TV, retrieved July 12, 2012.
11. U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts, U.S. Census Bureau, retrieved July 17, 2012.
12. Schedule | Memphis Redbirds Schedule, Minor League Baseball, retrieved July 17, 2012. Note that you'll have to scroll down and click the individual games to pull up the attendances.
13. Schedule | Tucson Padres Schedule, Minor League Baseball, retrieved July 17, 2012. Note that you'll have to scroll down and click the individual games to pull up the attendances.
14. Standings | Tucson Padres Standings, Minor League Baseball, retrieved July 17, 2012.
15. Turner Construction Bid, retrieved July 17, 2012.