Gone in 8 Seconds (or Moo XXIX)

[buzzy]

Last Legs

El Paso's soon-to-be-former City Hall gets prepared for demolition. You can see some of the windows are broken in this picture, but from what I can tell from a picture in the newspaper, they broke even more windows. The building implosion should take about eight seconds. This picture was taken by my dad.

As the very thin Easter Sunday newspaper said, "the stage is set"¹. That is, for the demolition of City Hall to build that baseball stadium. The date they set: Sunday, April 14, 2013 at 9 A.M. (Saturday, April 13 is when they bring down the ASARCO smokestacks, though I don't know what time.) I've never actually gone into the building, though I've walked by it, but it seems like it's going before its time. The ten-story building, completed 34 years ago² was sort of neglected. It's like they knew they were leaving and were trying to figure out what the excuse will be. I'm not even exactly sure when what I'm about to talk about happened, but my guess is around 2004 or 2005. Back then, I was employed by a charter school district and they wanted to move into the Insights Museum building. It would've been a great place to have a school, being close to museums and the main library. The building was a small two-story building next to City Hall. The museum itself was only leasing the building, which they did because they sold it to the city to pay down their debt. (A deal with the devil, I suppose. The city kicked them out and knocked that building down first. Unlike City Hall, I went to Insights multiple times and it was part of my childhood.) The district and the museum entered talks to sublease the building, but the city didn't allow it because they wanted the land occupied by the museum and City Hall to go to a hotel. (In other words, they wanted a for-profit venture there.) The school settled on a two-story church building on the west side instead. The hotel thing never happened. I'm assuming they deferred some of the maintenance to the building because there was an expectation they'd be leaving it soon. (They did something with the elevators not long before the stadium talk started.) It ended up being $33 million in deferred maintenance by the end; the building itself wasn't even worth that. Enter MountainStar Sports and the Tucson Padres. The city government finally had an excuse to get out of City Hall and endeavored to make it happen as fast as possible. (The stadium basically removes the last reason for anyone to come to the northeast if this new team kills the Diablos and Cohen Stadium. I guess we would just have to convince people to go to take the loop to pass through the northeast and spend a little cash on their way. I can see the ads now: "Northeast El Paso — it's that area with the Walmart and houses you pass when you're going from the west side to the east side." *show poppies on Trans Mountain from the last time they bloomed* *music swells*) We just have to trust them when they say this will make everything better for the city.

Last season, the Tucson team (the one we're getting) was dead last in the Pacific Coast League. I think they were so far at the bottom that if you included the International League standings, they'd still be at the bottom. Will people show up? Sure. I imagine that a lot of people will be curious and will want to watch at least one game in the new stadium. I think that eventually the newness will die out. How many people will watch a losing team? (It's entirely possible that they're not a winning team because their existence was in limbo. Why bother trying if they don't know where they'll end up?) I'd like to be wrong and have everything be awesome, but I'm not holding out hope. It's just my pessimistic nature, I guess. Then again, even the mayor thinks that it's not going to "drive Downtown revitalization or economic development."³ I'm just hoping that they at least have a cool name and an awesome logo. Not Padres...what kind of name is that anyway?

So what are all the magical things that people are saying will happen with the construction of this stadium?

• If you build it, they will come. Apparently people who are looking for somewhere to move look at whether the city has a minor league baseball team.⁴ Who knew? When I dream about getting out of this black hole that is El Paso, I look for cities that have professional hockey teams at any level, so I guess that's reasonable enough...assuming they're all people obsessed with baseball.
• Downtown revitalization There's lots of talk about this being the catalyst for improving downtown. Downtown needs improvement. It is damn scary to walk around all those run-down buildings and that's with a nearby police station. Every time I've been there, there are tons of people everywhere and it isn't clear what they're doing. All those people can't work in the office buildings. Maybe it isn't "If you build it, they will come"; it's "they came, so build something".
• Improved tax base If the downtown revitalization thing works out, then the businesses are going to pay property (and sales) taxes. If downtown is one of those TIF zones, the increased tax money won't help the rest of the city.
• Jobs I remember reading some jobs numbers, but something tells me most of them will be low-paying jobs in retail or concessions. There are a number of temporary jobs created for the construction though.
• Improved tourism I heard somewhere that this will bring people from other cities who will watch their team play in our ballpark. I don't think that there would be huge groups. I do remember going to Albuquerque to watch our AA hockey team play in the only away game I ever watched, so I know it happens.
• Money I just thought about how they mention that all this money will be flowing downtown. If that's true, that's money that's not flowing to other parts of town. The money is finite. Will other parts of town get run-down for the sake of making downtown pretty?

I don't know why I wrote all this, but every time the newspaper has something about this, I have a bunch of thoughts that need to go somewhere.

Notes

¹ I just have to point out that the El Paso Times site I linked to there has quite a few of the annoying web elements I talked about in my last entry and some other stuff I forgot to mention: share buttons that take up space that could be used by actual content, moving text along the bottom with a close button that doesn't work, and pop overs that recommend other stories when you haven't finished reading. Also, I'm not entirely sure I consider the El Paso Times the fourth estate in El Paso. Maybe the second. Unfortunately, they're the only daily paper we have.
² El Paso City Hall. Emporis GmbH. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
³ Ramirez, Cindy (2013-03-29). "El Paso Mayor John Cook: Ballpark alone won't revive Downtown". El Paso Times. Retrieved 2013-03-31.
⁴ El Paso Time Editorial Board (2012-10-12). "Celebration! We have Triple-A baseball". El Paso Times. Retrieved 2013-03-31.

Links

• El Paso Times articles about the baseball stadium