What Does the City of El Paso Envision for Downtown?

What Does the City of El Paso Envision for Downtown?

Hi, my name is John Peña with Living in El Paso, Texas, and we are so happy to have with us today Karina Brasguala with the City of El Paso, and I'm going to let her do a little introduction of herself. Awesome. Thank you, John, for having me. Karina Brasguala, as John mentioned, I'm the Assistant Director for Economic and International Development.

My focus is on our redevelopment program, so heavily focused on downtown and kind of older areas of town and how we can rehabilitate and reinvigorate those. I'm a native of El Paso and I've lived here my whole life. I was excited to come back and work for the city and thrilled to be here talking to you about one of my favorite places.

Awesome, and it's one of my favorite places, too, because the downtown is really the heart of most cities and every city is different. Some cities are fortunate enough to have really thriving, amazing downtowns, others not so much, and I think it's fair to say that El Paso is maybe kind of in that middle ground and we are progressing towards awesome, and so that's really what we're here to talk about is the development

and the vision that the city has for the downtown, so I'm going to let Karina talk a little bit just kind of about what the city envisions for downtown El Paso. Yeah, absolutely, and I think you're right that we're kind of in that middle space. We've seen a lot of investment and improvement in downtown in the past 10 years,

and so part of what the city is looking at as we move into the future is really just building on that momentum and we've done a huge amount of public and private investment. There's been over $700 million put into downtown in the past 10 years, and about half of that has come from the private sector, and so really looking at ways where the city can do improvements

to things like San Jacinto Plaza, like the new Children's Museum that's coming online later this year, but then also where we can partner with developers to bring things like West Star Tower, which is a new high-rise that El Paso hasn't seen one since the 1970s, new things like all the hotels that are coming online, and then really a big push for downtown residential.

So what we're looking at is just building that momentum and then really focusing on how we can attract different market segments. So we have a lot of office, we have a lot of hotel, we've got good events programming, but what we're really looking is a big push on residential. Having that residential component allows us to build on that kind of day-to-night activity,

so that's what we're looking at is a downtown that is active at all times of the day and is available for all different kinds of people, whether you're a student or a young professional who maybe lives downtown, if your family is visiting or if your tourist dollars come in and that kind of thing, so looking for people who are here for events or who live here or who work here

and making sure that they've got something to do that they're excited about. Absolutely, and it does strike me too because we were talking about another city, Kansas City, who had a situation where their downtown, it was pretty active Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, but then after 5, it was a complete ghost town and everybody then left the downtown,

went out to the suburbs, and that's kind of how it is here, but like you're saying, if downtown can develop a residential space where we actually get people living downtown, that's going to bring, what types of businesses would you imagine? So what we see right now is a lot of stuff that's kind of focused on that office market, right,

or people that are here for when we have like Winterfest going or Dia de los Muertos or other arts and culture festivals, so we'll have vendors downtown, so lots of smaller businesses, but it's kind of, it's restaurant-oriented, there's some bars. What we've really heard and are trying to focus on with that residential is getting things like grocery stores, getting a pharmacy back downtown, so stuff that serves residents,

but then I think also filling up some of those spaces that went vacant during the COVID pandemic and getting businesses back in there, just making sure that we have a variety of kind of shopping, eating, entertainment uses downtown. Which is great too, and you conveniently mentioned that we do have a number of vacant buildings here in downtown. Where we're standing right now, it's pretty active, right?

However, as we go a little bit more south, then there are more buildings that are empty, and so I do imagine that the city of course has hopes and dreams for those, if you could speak to that. Yeah, so we've really been focusing on building up kind of the core, so that's San Jacinto, and then also kind of the Arts Plaza district where all our museums are,

and that's easy in some ways because that's under government control. The city has control of those buildings, so it's very easy to get those kind of reinvigorated, and then what we're seeing is unfortunately South El Paso, which has been one of the oldest commercial corridors in the city, leading right into Ciudad Juarez across the bridge, a lot of those businesses went vacant during COVID.

They had to close, many of them were unable to open, and so we've really had a push in the last two years, and especially with all the federal funding coming online for our small business assistance programs. Just yesterday, City Council approved another $6 million and some change for small business assistance. That includes things like our technical assistance, financial help, access to capital through whether that's loan or grant programs,

and then so we did $6 million yesterday, we're looking at $14 million total, and that is going directly into the hands of small businesses to help them with payroll, but also looking at how we can get folks starting back up, recovering, and then also maybe starting new businesses, and so that's one of the big pushes there.

And then once they're active, you know, how do we get our small businesses help on, a lot of it is kind of the marketing side. If you're a bigger company, you know how to do advertising, you've got, you know, TV spots, that kind of thing. If you're a smaller business, how do you get the word out there?

So a lot of it is getting these folks set up with, do they want an e-commerce site? Do they want to have a website set up? And then working on just other ways to kind of get them out there. We have our buy local programs, the El Paso Marketplace, so that way we can kind of help promote those businesses as well.

And again, I think it's amazing, and small business is so important to a community, especially to a downtown that's looking to thrive and kind of grow, so that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm just kind of curious, I know that you have a fondness for old buildings downtown.

What are some of the buildings that you're kind of most excited about? What are your favorites? So I have a kind of a planning background, so I started in the kind of construction side of things. So anytime I can get my hands on a brick building, that's fantastic.

We don't do construction like that anymore. But things I'm really excited about is, I know you've talked about on your channel before, the Crest Building, which is going to have its kind of groundbreaking ribbon-cutting ceremony on April 27th. And that's going to be wonderful.

Some kind of ground floor, they're looking at like a food market kind of thing. And then, of course, the basement is going to be connected to the Plaza Hotel, offer some amenities, spa space, some other options there. I also, I'm really excited about, it's a little bit, it's already been under construction, it's been active,

but the Blue Flame restoration was incredible work. So formerly the Texas Gas Building, it's got the little flame light on the top. But that was a project done by our housing authority. And, I mean, beautiful units.

And then there's a wonderful space, the entire 17th floor, it's called the Center for Civic Engagement. And if you're ever interested in going to city events, we hold a lot of our public meetings there. But it's a wonderful flex space, beautiful views of the city, and just that whole renovation, really, really well done.

And a beautiful building to visit. And then they also have a restaurant on the ground floor. That's great. Yeah.

That's fantastic. And then in terms of downtown, I mean, we've seen some really exciting indicators. We are back at pre-pandemic levels of hotel occupancy. We've also just won the State Democratic Convention, which will be coming here early next year.

Beat San Antonio for that, so we're very excited. And then some other things, like a lot of the retail drivers, it is that traffic and trade from Mexico, but we are seeing an upward trend, about a 20% increase in visits over last year. So hopefully we'll get back to 2019 levels soon.

And I think that'll really help the downtown thrive. In addition to all the work we're doing with the Downtown Uptown Plan, which will be adopted in early May. That's fantastic. Awesome.

Nice. So, Karina, thank you so much. Thank you. Of course, for being here.

And we will maybe check back in with you in the future, just to kind of check in, see how some of those old buildings are doing, the residential. But it's pretty exciting what's happening in downtown. Absolutely.

In El Paso. I know that you're from here. You love the city. And so, again, thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. Of course.