Former Northeast El Paso city Rep. Stan Roberts often complained that the Public Service Board was stifling growth in his part of town, where the agency owned most of the land and sold it only in small chunks. In the 1980s, the PSB sold 640 acres to developers, who took about 20 years to turn the land into North Hills.


Now, with hundreds of acres under development, and Fort Bliss well into its much-talked-about expansion, the PSB is considering the sale of 3,200 to 3,500 acres in one shot, with a follow up sale of about 1,000 acres in the summer.


The Northeast land rush is under way.


Leading up to it has been a fierce debate, particularly over the process of selling the PSB land, with local developers complaining that the utility, and the city, which must approve the PSB plans, is about to hand someone a virtual monopoly over an unprecedented chunk of land. The PSB argues that it is trying to ensure “quality development,” a phrase that makes some local builders and developers bristle because, by extension, it implies that El Paso does not have such.

Perhaps more important than such catchphrases, however, is the PSB goal of having a “master developer” take charge of the land to ensure that issues such as drainage and streets, the skeleton of a community, are dealt with as a whole system, rather then developed piece by piece as small sections of the land are developed.


Although separate from the issue of whether the land is sold as one piece or several, other issues come into play with the plan:



-- The nature of development in El Paso, and how neighborhoods connect within themselves and with others;


-- The accuracy of PSB projections regarding the market for more expensive housing, which offsets the cost of open space and trails, considered amenities to some and essential to others;


-- The true scale of the housing boom in El Paso, which largely is spurred by growth at Fort Bliss;

-- And even whether the PSB has the right to control land now under its name, or whether that ought to be the purview of the City Council.



The land sale issue, and some of the associated policy discussion, will come to a head soon. The City Council approved a “request for qualifications” Oct. 4, and the PSB set a Dec. 29 deadline to receive qualification applications from master developer hopefuls. Meanwhile, the PSB has scheduled a special joint meeting with City Council to discuss issues of infrastructure, and land use and sales, on Dec. 8. And on Dec. 7, the City Plan Commission will consider alterations to the Northeast Master Plan, which then will go before the City Council.


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The Public Service Board commissioned Kimley Horn in 2003 to develop a master plan for 15,000 acres of land in Northeast El Paso. That plan was finished in 2005. [kimley-horn plan] Later that year, the PSB commissioned URS to perform a study of about 6,000 acres. The URS study, now complete, made some alterations to the Kimley Horn plan, and recommended that the PSB sell 3,200 to 3,500 acres in one piece, far outstripping any other single land sale by the PSB. [urs study]

The El Paso Association of Builders, which generally supports the master plan for use of the land, wants the land broken into pieces, instead of sold at once. The membership publicly is nearly unanimous in this desire, although one prominent member, the Hunt Building Corporation, has broken with the group and supports a single master developer.


Mayor John Cook called it “premature” to assume how the land would be sold.


“We’ll see what kind of proposals we get back from master developers. If we get a lot of good proposals back that’s validating what will work,” said Mayor John Cook.


The PSB estimates infrastructure -- streets, drainage and water and sewer pipes -- would cost slightly more than $60 million.


“The thing is if you can find somebody who is actually willing to do $60 million worth of infrastructure all in one whack and wait to get their money, and have them be the one to take the risk, the master plan will end up working,” Cook said. He said the tradeoff is perhaps giving up a higher price if land is sold one piece at a time.

That is a point made by developer Bobby Bowling IV, who also argues that multiple developers still could create an infrastructure system, as well as be forced to abide by other development restrictions such as what types of homes may be built where, and open space and trail set-asides, and then “if we’re interested in bidding we bid accordingly.”


But Nick Costanzo, assistant general manager of the El Paso Water Utilities, the city department that is overseen by the PSB, said the infrastructure must be built as a piece.


“What happens if you need drainage up and down the line but this piece hasn’t been sold yet? What happens if here’s this half of a street and the rest isn’t done? Some of this infrastructure needs to be built up front,” he said.


He and other advocates for using a master developer to install infrastructure as a one-piece system point to parts of El Paso where streets and drainage do not connect because different developers build different pieces at different times. Much of the flooding this summer was attributed to poorly designed drainage. And in the Northeast, “on Sean Haggerty, the road goes across what people want for a green belt,” said Ed Archuleta, general manager of the El Paso Water Utility.

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Bowling and other builders and developers question whether the process is being set up to favor large-scale developers, including Hunt and the Verde Group, owned by real estate titan Bill Sanders.


“The RFQ is totally subjective ... I don’t know if it will eliminate any bidders. I haven’t seen the restrictions on bidding yet but I’m pretty sure there will be something in there,” Bowling said.


Costanzo said the RFQ is “a pass fail, we want to qualify as many as we can.” The RFQ includes evaluation of three elements: Organizational strength; finances; and planning and vision. Based on responses to the RFQ, an evaluation committee will qualify bidders, who in February will receive an “invitation to bid.” Bids are due in April, and the bid award is due in May. The winning bidder will purchase the land on a “takedown” schedule that will be part of the bid packet, Costanzo said.

In addition to that land sale, Costanzo said the PSB plans to sell 1,000 acres to the south and east of larger land package in smaller parcels.


Costanzo said the total acreage that will be sold in May is not settled, and neither is the price, although he said he thinks it will be a minimum of $10,000 an acre for up to 3,500 acres. “We’re doing metes and bounds now, and we’re working with the (City Plan Commission) on hike and bike trails, and arroyos ... the total taken out of development will be closer to 6,000 (acres),” Costanzo said.


In El Paso for the past 20 years, subdivisions typically have been built in chunks ranging from a few dozen acres to a few hundred. The 3,200-3,500 acre sale would give one developer control over enough land to last 10 years, by the most aggressive predictions, although that timeline has been challenged.


“It’s not good to put so much land in the hands of one developer for the rest of our lifetime, regardless of what is being said. The 3,200 acres, to our knowledge, is more than the combined acreage of every piece of land the PSB has auctioned off since 1952,” said Ray Adauto, executive vice president of the El Paso Association of Builders.


Doug Schwartz, CEO of Southwest Land Development, a company whose predecessor built most of East El Paso, called the sale of 3,200 acres to one developer “monopolistic. I think people are just scared to have one chunk of land in one hand. Their (PSB) basis is to get the kind of development they want, (but) they can get it whether they have one piece or four pieces.”

Woody Hunt, CEO of Hunt Building Corporation, has spoken in favor of master planned development, and in October wrote an open letter to El Pasoans urging support of the master developer concept. [letter]


In the letter, Hunt wrote that “Evidence from other cities suggests that master-planned communities not only set a higher standard but also produce more lots and more housing choices in the market. If we believe that El Paso's past policies have not created a community we can be proud of, now is the time to ask, ‘What changes can we make that will result in a higher quality outcome?’”


Hunt has clashed with other developers before, over growth and development in East El Paso. [background]


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One of the motivations for the Kimley-Horn plan was to create a different type of community in El Paso. The plan called for “town centers,” or high-density nodes that included commercial and retail activity, essentially replacing strip centers, that are linked through transit corridors. “Rather than having a series of disconnected single-use developments, ‘nodal development’ promotes a dense mix of land uses which recreate the social benefit of a community. Urban Form promotes social interaction and discourages an over-dependency on vehicle trips,” stated the plan.

City Rep. Susie Byrd said URS altered the plan to make it more palatable to developers, limiting the amount of space given to town centers and reducing housing densities.


“To me it (URS plan) looks like the same old stuff they have been doing. I’m concerned because they initially did have a ‘new urbanist’ plan, then abandoned that based on commercial viability, but they never tested that by going out to bid,” Byrd said.


“The other thing I’m concerned about was raised as part of the quarry issue. They have all this open space they have a commitment in the master plan to preserve and then whenever it comes to preserving (open space) they back off,” Byrd said. “To date they haven’t created a mechanism for preserving that land in perpetuity.”

The PSB initially leased land designated for open space to Jobe Materials for quarrying; it reversed the decision, “but only after the issue was raised by residents,” Byrd said. [background] She said after that, during one presentation, a map was shown that included the open space as part of the quarry. She said it may have been a simple oversight, “but everybody’s unease would be resolved if they took the steps right now.”


Costanzo said the PSB is attempting to sell at cost plus 3 percent a year portions of the land identified as open space close to the mountain to the state, for inclusion into the Franklin Mountain State Park.


As for reducing the densities, Costanzo said the Kimley-Horn plan designed a community for 100,000 people, and that has been reduced to 40,000.


“When URS looked at the building types here, the lots were so small all you saw were a line of garages,” he said. “They wanted to increase the lot sizes here so you would have an appearance of a nicer community.”

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Schwartz, whose company is building what he calls a similar community on the site of the old Hueco Club off Montana in Far East El Paso, said the city itself may be the biggest stumbling block to the type of development leaders say they want.


“They’re pushing a plan you can’t do under the current city ordinance,” Schwartz said. “There’s no flexibility to do creative things. For example, we have to have the wide streets that create highways through residential subdivisions.”


Schwartz said his company took about two and a half years to get approvals for the Hueco Club, and “we had to give so much it affected the quality of the product.”


He called that development unique to El Paso, with alleys, reduced setbacks, narrow streets, such design guidelines for houses as porches and stoops and rear entry with garage, mixed housing types and costs, and pedestrian pathways. It also might require people buying homes be part of a homeowners’ association.

“We’re not going to call it new urbanism because we’re not in an urban setting,” Schwartz said. “This is new suburbanism.”


Costanzo said the PSB is working with the city to make sure codes allow for the type of development contemplated in the plans.


“They have a new planner working on smart growth ordinances,” Costanzo said. “We’ll see the timing on that as we wrap up this fall and look at the bid document how we want to frame that work.”


As the city reevaluates how it grows, the debate will continue between those who advocate a new way of designing communities and those who have a successful business model they say has been good for the city. Fort Bliss and its growth, and the PSB land issues in Northeast El Paso, are large elements of the debate, but it applies equally all over El Paso, from the annexation issues on the East Side to PSB land in Northwest El Paso that has been eagerly eyed by developers for years.

The discussion also encompasses Downtown El Paso, and the urban core that dates back to when El Paso was one of the first cities in the nation -- in 1925 -- to develop a master plan for how a modern city can grow, and how the growth can benefit the entire community. The issues are a bit more complex now, but essentially the same: How can government work with private interests and unaligned residents -- the three legs of a healthy civic body -- to guide development so it enhances, rather than strains, the community's shared quality of life?


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Sito Negron can be reached at sito@epmediagroup.com.