Dear Mayor Johnson,
Yesterday, City Council voted 8-0 to proceed with a RFQ that will result in the sale of 17 City-owned properties within the former Arena Footprint to private investors.
The 2017 County architectural survey determined that 6 of those properties (when one excludes the Trost Fire House) are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places while another 5 would be “contributing” properties if they were included within a National Register historic district.
This means that all 11 properties could be potentially eligible for federal and state tax credits covering up to 45% of rehabilitation costs.
I have always maintained that without those tax credits there can be no pragmatic solution for the Duranguito properties.
These are the same tax credits that local developers—including Paul Foster, Stuart Meyers, and Lane Gaddy—have used to restore their downtown skyscrapers. Currently there are 26 downtown properties that are individual listed on the National Register of Historic Places and nearly all of these have been restored or will soon be restored.
The County architectural survey recommended that establishment of two National Register districts in our urban core: in the Segundo Barrio and Downtown.
The Segundo Barrio National Register Historic District was created November 3, 2021 and includes 685 properties that are potentially eligible for federal and state tax credits. It is thanks to this new district and the tax credits that come with it that the Sacred Heart Church will soon be restored.
Unfortunately, the County plan to create a similar district in our Downtown has been stalled for years.
El Paso is the only major city in Texas that still does not have a National Register historic district in its downtown. Cities like San Antonio have seen billions of dollars of tax credits support scores of major restoration and rehabilitation projects, but the use of these credits in El Paso is still in the embryonic phase.
To be clear, while local H-overlay historic districts provide protection against demolition, listing on the National Register provides none. This is one of the reasons why developers like Paul Foster like the National Register, which does not infringe upon private property rights.
In the heat of my litigation to prevent the destruction of Duranguito and the planned expenditure of over $500 million on a downtown MPC, Mayor Dee Margo wrote a letter to the Texas Historical Commission opposing the establishment of a National Register district in downtown El Paso.
Paul Foster engaged the Kemp Smith law firm to send letters to downtown property owners urging them to formally oppose the creation of such a district, telling them that it would lead to burdensome regulations (which is absolutely false). This is because Foster and his allies know that publicly-owned National Register properties may be nominated by anyone to be Recorded Texas Historical Landmarks (RTHLs), which come with nominal protection against demolition; and that their hopes for a downtown MPC would therefore have been threatened if the Arena Footprint properties had been included withing a National Register historic district.
Under federal law, if more than 50% of property owners within a proposed National Register district formally oppose its creation, the project dies. Kemp Smith claimed to have reached that threshold but, in fact, many of the property owners who submitted letters of opposition voted twice and several others were not eligible to cast a vote. The short of it is that Kemp Smith failed to meet the threshold to kill the project, which is currently sitting on a shelf at the Texas Historical Commission waiting to be re-activated.
Now that the Arena litigation is over and the City has resolved to help restore the neighborhood. I hope that you will send a letter to the Texas Historical Commission supporting the establishment of a Downtown El Paso National Register Historic District, replacing Dee Margo’s letter of several years ago.
Establishing the district would increase the number of tax-credit-eligible buildings in our downtown from 26 to 191, including 11 buildings in the former Arena Footprint (6 individually eligible and 5 contributing).
Apparently the City plans to require future buyers of the 6 properties that are individually eligible for the National Register to go through the trouble of listing the properties as a condition of purchase.
Quite frankly, that is absurd. The City should simply support the County’s 2017 plan, which cost over $150,000 to execute, so that potentially buyers know that the tax credits will soon be available to them, extending the tax credits to 11 Duranguito buildings rather than 6.
There is absolutely no negative impact to moving forward with the County’s plan, as the City Attorney’s Office made clear in a public presentation several years ago. On the contrary, it would spark scores of rehabilitation projects across our downtown, increasing revenue for our local taxing, Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone 5, and the Downtown Management District.
A letter from you to the Texas Historical Commission could push the County’s plan over the finish line and you would earn the good will of many thousands of El Pasoans who want to see our historical assets cared for and promoted.
Respectfully,
Max Grossman, Architectural Historian