Plans for three historic Downtown buildings were unveiled Friday evening at a celebration in the long-dormant Plaza Hotel.
Brent Harris, president of Mills Plaza Properties, said, “We’re still in the concept design process to determine the highest and best use of the space.” He added that the plans could include entertainment and retail options on the first couple of floors of the Plaza Hotel, with a boutique hotel and residences possible for the middle and top floors of the recently acquired 79-year-old edifice.
In renderings displayed inside the hotel’s lobby, Mills Street would be blocked off to vehicle traffic at its intersection with Oregon Street. The closed portion of Mills then would be a pedestrian promenade that will feature outdoor dining and a venue for public art and will include trees and benches.
The Anson Mills and the Centre buildings, which are across Mills from the Plaza Hotel, also are owned by Mills Plaza Properties and Paul Foster, CEO of Western Refining.
“The plan is to create a pedestrian area unlike anything anyone in El Paso has ever seen,” Harris said. “Now that we control this building (the Plaza Hotel), it’s our little neck of the woods.”
Foster said the city officials have been receptive to the idea of closing Mills to vehicle traffic, but no official action has been taken by the city, which will consider the idea Tuesday.
Also on shown at the gathering were renderings of what the restored Mills Building could look like. A brightly lit building would host offices on the upper floors and restaurant and entertainment options on the first and second floors. In the concepts, the building is shown in its original white color. Foster purchased Anson Mills late last year.
Mills Plaza Properties also recently purchased a corner lot at the intersection of Oregon and Main streets from the City of El Paso earlier this year. The lot, across the street from San Jacinto Plaza and formerly used for a Sun Metro ticket kiosk, is adjacent to the Anson Mills Building and could be used to host a parking garage for the area.
Foster, owner of Mills Plaza Properties, said the company plans on returning the Plaza Hotel to its original design and grandeur but to update it for modern times.
“We want it to be as similar as possible to what it was,” he stated. “But we also have to adapt it to what it is 90 years later.
Harris echoed Foster’s statements.
“There are aspects that will be restored, and others that we will bring into the 20th Century,” he said. He stated work has not begun on the upper floors of the building. He said the condition of the rooms is not poor, but is “very old.”
The hotel was designed by El Paso Architect Henry Trost for Conrad Hilton. When its construction was completed, the Plaza Hotel was the tallest building in El Paso. Actress Elizabeth Taylor briefly resided in the hotel’s penthouse while she was married to Nicky Hilton, the son of Conrad Hilton Sr.
Though there are currently no tenants who have leased space in the building, Foster said the company “has a plan of attack and a list of people” who could possibly occupy the space.
Ken G
March 10, 2008
This is good. Private money.
Enrique Medrano
March 11, 2008
The core of downtown El Paso, the area around San Jacinto Plaza, will change primarily as a result of the relocation by Joyce Wilson of the downtown bus terminal away from San Jacinto Plaza. The relocation of the downtown bus terminal is the key to potentially realizing the desires expressed by those who partcipated in the Glass Beach study and pined for Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz look-alikes to swarm downtown El Paso.
The 20,000 or so daily pedestrian border crossers from Cd. Juarez (represented by the old Mexican, sombrero-wearing viejito in the Glass Beach study), whose buying power was responsible for forming the Golden Horseshoe between the two downtown international bridges and the downtown bus stops at San Jacinto Plaza, will, for the time being, have to make their way to the City Parking Garage and Trolley Terminal south of the Civic Center on West Overland Street in the Union Plaza District.
In a recent article by Leon Metz on Porfirio Diaz in the El Paso Times (March 3, 2008), he wrote: "In 1910-11, Mexico celebrated its centennial of independence, Diaz inviting the world's most powerful and wealthy to the capital, plying them with imported delicacies and pageantry. This man, whose own blood was predominantly Indian, ordered other Indians off the streets `less their poverty offend visitors'."
Those whose poverty may "offend visitors" are being relocated away from San Jacinto Plaza. But hey, this is par for the course in redevelopment and gentrification efforts throughout the country.
Mr. Foster's revitalization project will become a reality in terms of a refurbished Mills Building, Plaza Hotel, and Centre Building (White House Department Store building). Will he be able to fill his buildings with tenants paying prime rental rates? Will his retail merchant and food service tenants have enough customers to run their businesses in the black long term? I hope so. Will the storefronts in the vicinity of San Jacinto Plaza, whose customer base (the daily border crossers) is being relocated to the new downtown bus terminal in the Union Plaza District, be able to successfully convert to retail stores that will draw customers away from the malls? I hope so.
It is time for City Council to scrap the Redevelopment Zone portion of its downtown revitalization plan, or at least put it on the back burner for at least five years. Let's see if the relocation of the downtown bus terminal away from San Jacinto Plaza and Paul Foster's project "revitalizes" the core of downtown El Paso.
If Foster's plan succeeds, City Council can revisit the need for a plan which calls for forced redevelopment of the area around the core of downtown using eminent domain. If Foster's plan doesn't succeed, it simply means the redevelopment zone scheme, which is much more grandiose, will never succeed.