Amazon, Meta, and the Sunset Amphitheater: Three Projects Changing El Paso

Shocking Truth: How Amazon and Meta Will Transform El Paso Forever!

Hey El Paso! What is new? I'm going to tell you, we are going to tell you exactly what's new with three big projects that are happening right now in El Paso. One is almost done, the second one is supposedly coming soon, and the third one is breaking ground next week. So let's jump into it.

Yeah, first one is going to be the Amazon Distribution Center in the west side. Actually, we made a little video about this when they first started construction. It was just dirt. Now, like you said, it's pretty much almost completed. It's going to be a 160,000 square foot facility.

Now, there's an article that says that it's valued about $51.5 million. It's going to be, you know, mixed opinions. Some people don't like the idea, some people like the idea. People think that there's going to be traffic, all kinds of things. So I'm curious to see what you guys think

about all these different projects that, you know, we're going to be talking about. Now, they do say that it's going to help with job creation, right? But the $51.5 million is expected to have long-term growth for El Paso, meaning more jobs, more demand for housing, also rentals.

You know, that's the expectation that they're saying. Now, with the commercial growth and with all that also comes a lot of different changes to the signage, the roads, upgrades. As you're aware, there's a lot of changes in the freeway and the roads right there in I-10.

I think they're not only expanding the freeway like we noticed, but, you know, they're probably trying to accommodate all the different changes and the expansion that we're seeing right here, especially in Cimarron. It's just grown. It's grown quite a bit.

Now, the article states here that Amazon bought the property and the city sold 44 acres of development. Another thing to keep in mind is that this is our second Amazon distribution center, because we've got one over in Horizon, right?

What's that been there like four years now? And so now they decided that one wasn't big enough and they had to do two. So basically, what does it mean? It means that for people in El Paso, it's likely that like when you order something,

you've got a real good chance of like getting it same day, which let's be honest, is convenient. But at the same time, I'm a little skeptical about supporting long-term growth. We all know that Amazon is the ones with the most robots ever,

and that essentially robots are the ones that are already doing all the work. So this idea that there's going to be long-term job growth, I don't know about that. I think that's far-fetched. And yeah, to your point, pretty interesting that they're putting it right on the corner

there near Cimarron. Miguel and I, we were just over there. There's a new traffic lights that are going in. And yeah, I mean, those trucks with all the stuff, they got to come in and out.

And so I don't know, I guess we'll see how that all plays out. Yeah, it's definitely already pretty busy there. Every time we have to cross I-10, it seems like a nightmare to come back. So I'm hoping it's not too bad.

You know, like I said, I'm curious to see what people think about all these projects, because it's definitely going to, you know, affect it. I don't know, hopefully in a good way, but we don't know. Yeah, we don't know.

Now this one, Otto, really is definitely going to get some people riled up, because it kind of gets me riled up. The second one, speaking of big tech, Meta is planning to build an AI data center in El Paso, in the Northeast particularly.

So let me give you some of the details. This is straight from Facebook. El Paso, Texas will be our home to our newest AI focused data center, which can scale to one gigawatt and will support our growing AI workload.

OK, check this out. One gigawatt. OK, one gigawatt. This is the amount of power that's going to be required by the data center.

One gigawatt can power roughly 750,000 to one million homes. A typical large power plant, like a natural gas or even a nuclear power plant, often produces around one gigawatt. OK, that's astronomical, right?

How are we going to support the energy needs for this? All right. Here's more from Facebook. The data center will contribute to El Paso's economic growth

by supporting 1,800 construction jobs at its peak, totally. Yeah, when it's being built. And then when it's done, those jobs will go away. And creating around 100 operational jobs for the initial phase.

100 is not a lot of jobs. OK, that is not job growth. 100 jobs. Are you kidding me?

Insane. OK, now they're trying to say that they're going to design and build this data center with efficiency, flexibility and sustainability. OK, they've partnered with local organizations to basically provide money to El Paso Electric

for like the transmission lines and substations. But that's just infrastructure to support the data center itself. That's not helping the city out in any way. But the big problem to me is like we live in a desert.

What is there not a lot of? Water. The way a data center is basically a big building full of servers and computer chips. And as you know, like your laptop, you set your laptop for a while.

What does it do? It starts to get hot, right? So imagine this in a huge building. There's so much heat.

How do you cool down these spaces? You use water. OK, this to me sounds absolutely insane. Facebook, they say we strive to be good water stewards in communities where we have data

centers. That's why we plan to use a closed loop liquid cooled system in this data center that will use zero water for a majority of the year. I mean.

Oh, my gosh. They're going to be good water stewards. They want to be water positive by 2030, meaning they're going to restore more water than they consume in El Paso.

We will restore 200 percent of the water consumed by the data center to local watersheds. What are they doing? Making water? Is it just me or is the math not adding up?

El Paso matters there. You should check out their TikTok because they they have some interviews with people from the community and people from the water department. But AI data center in the desert in El Paso for 100 jobs.

One more thing. You would think, oh, well, we're going to get all this money from property taxes and it'll like give us more of the city more money. Meta is getting an 80 percent break on its city property taxes for 35 years.

That means they're only paying about one fifth of the taxes they normally would. Why? Because cities offer these deals to attract massive projects. OK, call me skeptical on this one.

All right. So, yeah, if you're watching this, please give us your comments and let us know what you think. Yeah.

Maybe people know a little bit more about it. But yeah, to me, that sounds crazy. Doesn't sound great. I have a maybe I mean, some people might not like this one, but I think this one's a more

OK. Yeah. This last one, I think, is more positive that maybe people can get behind. Yeah.

So this one's got to be the sunset amphitheater. So now it's officially happening. It's going to be 12,500 seat venue projected 2 billion economic impact over 10 years. It's expected to open quarter four of next year.

So by the end of 2026, it is going to be 80 million dollars, which the city contributed 31 million dollars to the project. Now it's supposed to host or expect to host about 40 concerts a year, which I'm excited for because I mean, I don't go to a lot of concerts, but I think that's one thing people

always say, hey, El Paso, we don't we don't have the big artists to come often. You know, we do have them, but not as often. So I think this could be a big opportunity for many different artists to have the chance to come over here and maybe bring obviously more money, more jobs to El Paso.

But I think it's a good idea. I think the location is great. It's going to be in the northeast pretty much. Now it's going to be the Cohen Entertainment District right there in the northeast, pretty

much close to 375 Loop and the freeway. What do you think? Since you obviously you like music a lot, you were a music teacher. What do you think that's going to do El Paso?

And are you excited about that? Yeah, I think that one makes sense because that's something actually for the city. It's nice to give the northeast something feels like they kind of get left out like the west side.

Like we've got all this new stuff around Cimarron that's super nice. Horizon is blowing up, right? It feels like the northeast is sometimes kind of left out. So the fact that they're getting something is kind of cool.

I think the traffic over there is going to be great. So I don't see that it's going to create a big problem with traffic. And yeah, people, especially people who are from here seem to always are like, oh, El Paso is so boring.

Well, great. 40 more concerts a year. Great. The Sunset Amphitheater will also have a VIP section called the Aikman Club, partnership

with NFL Hall of Famer and 8 Beer founder Troy Aikman. So that's supposed to be like a high luxury hospitality area that maybe people can rent out or something. So, I mean, that's kind of cool.

So, yeah, this one, I think, you know, yeah, this feels like something that's more for the people. It feels like the Amazon center and the AI data center. I don't know who that's for exactly.

Especially the data center. I mean, like, yeah, they're not paying taxes. They're using water, only 100 jobs. And it needs the power of a large power plant.

You know, what are we going to do? Literally build another power plant for the data center? Crazy. But anyway, that's it.

Three big developments kind of here in 2025. Let us know what you think in the comments.