What's New in El Paso? | Spring 2022

What's New in El Paso? | Spring 2022

Hi, welcome to living in El Paso, Texas. My name is John Peña and in this episode We're gonna do kind of like a what's going on in El Paso event kind of end of April and I've got three things for you Number one, there's a really cool development happening downtown with one of our historic buildings number two There is some very interesting news about property taxes and number three

We're going to talk a little bit about solar power capacity in El Paso I mean we are the Sun City after all so with all of that Thank you so much for watching the channel If you or somebody that you know is looking to buy sell or invest in El Paso

We would be greatly honored if you would consider reaching out to us for those real estate needs We are so excited to have kind of grown into Peña El Paso realty group now and so we're pretty excited about the future and Looking to help as many folks as we can. So without further ado

Let's go ahead and jump in to see what's going on in El Paso right now How about the crest building downtown I Love I love all the architecture downtown. I love all the truss buildings. I mean It's awesome

I think our downtown is amazing and I think it has a lot of potential to to blossom into more of a downtown living Type of vibe, you know There's a lot of cities when I was living in Kansas City

For instance, the downtown was pretty barren and then all of a sudden these developers came in They turned a lot of abandoned buildings into like these cool lofts and then you know Grocery stores and restaurants coffee shops all of that kind of moved in and it really revitalized the downtown you know now the downtown is a

Thriving thriving area of the city. I think there's a lot of that potential in the El Paso downtown I mean everybody knows that there's kind of it almost feels like two separate downtown's, you know, you have kind of the the front downtown Closer to interstate 10 in San Jacinto Plaza the Plaza, you know all the hotels and it's super super nice And then you have kind of the downtown that goes from kind of the plaza back to the border

Essentially and a lot of those buildings are older including the crest building, but they they haven't kind of flourished and I think that's going to change and so The crest building is actually going to become according to the El Paso Times is going to become a food hall now I'll talk about that in a second real quick crest building was completed in 1938

It had an extensive interior renovation in 1955. It's about 84 years old And it's been long vacant right kind of an art deco Decorative exterior that you've all probably seen otherwise you can check out this footage and it's been owned by Paul Foster for the last three years so

What they're going to do with the crest building is they're going to turn it into a food hall on the first floor It's about 15,000 square feet The second floor is going to become kind of like an event center and then the basement. I think this is really cool There's a basement and they're going to connect they're going to make a tunnel from the crest building

Underneath Oregon Street over to the Hotel Pioneer Plaza Park space and basically they're going to use the basement to do it like a spa kind of salon. So This is pretty cool. I think they're expected to begin this summer It's supposed to take about two years at a cost at about 18.4 million with about 3 million

to that tunnel under Oregon Street, and so Now honestly, I didn't know what a food hall was like it that makes me think about a like a food court in a mall and I think it's kind of like that but just maybe a little bit hipper and fancier maybe but

Supposedly a food hall is kind of like a popular idea in other cities. It'll basically feature This is great local food offerings with no national franchised brands. I think that's awesome So they're looking for vendors that are quote up-and-coming and show promise and potential And want to further develop their product

it's going to be located on that main floor and they say they're going to have about maybe 12 food vendors in there and Interspersed between them. They're going to have kind of like small local retail vendors. So a Key feature to be renovated and replaced. This is cool Will be a lunch counter with a soda fountain now if you're younger you may be like, what is a soda fountain?

I'll throw up an image right here but these were popular kind of back in the day and it sounds like the food hall actually had a soda fountain and Kind of like a soda fountain They're also going to have a bar in this space as well for for alcoholic beverages. So

Pretty cool. The 15,000 square foot second floor was going to be more for like an event center This could be like various events business meetings weddings, you know, what have you? Oh, yeah They're also talking about having like a small private viewing room for like sports games Maybe even games like they you know, think Dave and Buster's, you know

And then again, like I said that 15,000 square foot basement is going to be a spa and salon Connected to the Plaza Pioneer Park Hotel, but open to the public. So Finally, they're going to try to restore and basically preserve all of the historical elements I mean, there's there's a lot of really cool stuff on the outside of the building and I imagine

There's a lot of pretty cool stuff on the inside of the building And so they're going to try to preserve a lot of that So I thought it was a pretty interesting use of space downtown and it goes back to what I was saying in the beginning You know if you're going to try to invite people to to live in either condos apartments

You know kind of kind of downtown urban living. Well, then you need to have amenities there for them You know, you need to have food you need to have there's plenty of restaurants I suppose and and bars and things like that But if we start to see and I have no idea

But if we start to see El Paso push kind of downtown living I suspect, you know We're going to see future development and I find it super super interesting. I hope you do too And I wanted to talk about this very very interesting news article that El Paso Times just put out City Council directs city manager to develop tax relief plan for property owners

So we've been talking about this But basically in the beginning of April most of us got our updated appraisal reports And unfortunately for most of us, we saw our appraised value climb significantly meaning of course that we are going to pay more in property taxes, so

City Council recently voted unanimously Amazing to direct Tommy Gonzalez to come up with a plan to decrease the city's property tax rate So What they're saying here is that there's the potential that we're actually going to lower the property tax rate in El Paso

Which I know is good news to everybody The plan will be part of the 2023 fiscal budget plan Currently the city's property tax rate is zero point nine zero seven three zero one per $100. Okay. Now if we decrease that number that property tax rate

Like I said, we're all going to be we're all going to be a little happier because we're going to pay less in property taxes So now the El Paso Central Appraisal District says that it's you know, they're justifying why these prices have gone up They're saying look it's a hot market as prices and commodities continue to rise because of inflation and supply chain issue I would add to that

we're seeing our property values raised because The real estate market is so hot that most buyers are having to pay 20-30-40-50 thousand dollars over the asking price and then those Inflated prices, you know get taken into account and voila. We end up with higher property tax

Evaluations. So the overall market value of all the single-family homes in El Paso increased 25% this year to a total of 43 billion. I mean That's something, you know

the overall market value of all the single-family homes Increased 25% in just one year. Now. This is probably great news in some regards to the city the school districts, you know, the community college all the all those taxing entities because they're going to see you know a significant

Significantly higher amount of money coming to them. But like I said for the homeowner This is not ideal at all. And so last year Speaking about people not being too pumped about, you know increased appraisal values last year about 28,000 people filed a protest to get their

Evaluation their appraised value change So it would have been super interesting if they would have like told us of those 28,000 how many people were successful in their protest, but I'd love if you're watching this video and you've protested your appraised value here in El Paso

I'd love for you in the comments to put down whether or not you were Successful or not and maybe how much you were able to have them trim it off. So property taxes are always a Pretty interesting topic here in El Paso, but I thought this was an amazing article starting to say that

Hey, look the city the City Council. They're starting to take notice and realize like okay El Paso is great But what's not so great are these pretty significant property taxes that we all pay and I'm of course of the opinion that yes You get what you pay for meaning. Yeah, we have great schools roads here fire police all of that

We want those services, but at the same time if our property values are going to increase so dramatically, you know It doesn't seemingly Sound fair that you know, our property tax rate stays the same as our you know Inflated home values continue to climb so interesting little news there from the El Paso Times. Thank you to them

Because obviously we live in the Sun City and You would think that solar would be a fantastic option and it is but Found a recent article that kind of sheds a little bit of light on maybe where El Paso stands on it. So El Paso actually trails San Antonio and Albuquerque in solar capacity per person. So at the end of

2021 El Paso has a So at the end of 2021 El Paso had just over 70 megawatts of installed solar capacity, which is about a hundred and three watts per person now

San Antonio had 355 megawatts with about 247 watts per person, which is substantially substantially more here and so between

2017 and 2021 El Paso nearly doubled its installed solar capacity from about 37 megawatts to just over 70 So that's pretty awesome in the last four years with nearly

300 days of Sun El Paso's solar Potential is quote unquote Practically limitless and so this you know solar does make a it makes a lot of sense in the Sun City, right?

so El Paso ranks fourth in Texas behind San Antonio Austin and Houston El Paso electric own solar facilities with eight megawatts as of 2020 and This is really interesting. They buy

107 megawatts of solar through power purchase agreements What I think this means is that in and again, don't quote me on this I hope I'm right because I think this is the best way that solar works for consumers, but that essentially Let's say that I have solar panels on my home

and if I generate more power than I use then that extra energy that I've Essentially created with my solar panels can be sold back to El Paso electric So that is pretty awesome And then so like I said if that is how it works here in El Paso and by the way

If you know the answer to that question, is that how it works, please leave a comment Below and and I would be very grateful. So El Paso electric though. This is great. They have a goal of 80% being 80% carbon free by 2035 so

Solar is a really interesting topic. I sold we sold a house to a gentleman a really nice house And it had a complete solar it had the Tesla solar panels and it had three Tesla, what do they call them? The power packs essentially so he had three of these these power packs in his garage he had two

electric vehicle connections and so You know, it's likely that Electric prices are not going to go down anytime soon I think I think you would be naive to think that somehow utility prices are going to go down. So

Since utility prices aren't going to go down Having a renewable energy source like solar in some place like El Paso seemingly makes a lot of sense So we'd be super curious about what you think and please comment below and until next time. We'll see you later