City Approves $22 Million In Rebates For Smart Growth Development

The El Paso City Council has approved $22 million in tax rebates for a developer planning a smart growth community in West El Paso, amid concerns that the proposed land is too contaminated to develop.

Private company Geltmore Aldea bought the property, located between I-10, Mesa and Executive Center Drive, from ASARCO in 2005. Years ago, they had planned to develop it in a traditional way, but the city has since suggested Smart Growth.

“For the last 50 years or even longer, El Paso’s subdivisions have been less than impressive. They’ve been mediocre in fact. It’s exciting in that it’s a return to something that really seems to work, that young people expect to see in the cities that they move to or stay in and I think it’s going to be one part in the strategy for keeping and retaining young people in El Paso,” said Councilman Beto O’Rourke, who represents the area.

Smart Growth is a development style that plans for walkable, high-density communities, with retail, residential and entertainment areas all close together. Among its purposes is to avoid sprawl and provide a better quality of life.

“You’ll be able to walk down to a neighborhood restaurant, walk down to get a cup of coffee, walk to the store, walk to a friend’s house, very easily get on a bus rapid transit line, which is a high speed bus line that will serve the area. It’s the kind of community that you’d find in Chicago, in San Francisco, in Austin,” said O’Rourke.

The El Paso City Council on Tuesday, approved to rebate the developer up to $22 million in public infrastructure projects, such as streets and drainage. Usually, a developer takes on the costs of public projects within a development. In this case, though, the city is willing to reimburse the company, so long as they build the private and public projects within the development using smart growth guidelines.

“If the developer does not build out as planned, then the city does not rebate the money,” said O’Rourke.

The development, which will neighbor the Montecillo development — another smart growth community — will be built within the next 15 years, according to O’Rourke. It will mostly consist of retail and entertainment venues.

“I would like this idea and this plan if I didn’t know what ASARCO had done, but I don’t think it’s wise or prudent to develop a site like this and not consider the liabilities from this toxic material,” said Heather McMurray, an environmental activist who addressed the council on Tuesday.

She believes the land is too contaminated to develop. “That land is contaminated with massive amounts of arsenic. You can’t taste it; you can’t smell it,” she said.

McMurray said people living in the area in the future would most likely suffer from illnesses because of the alleged toxins. “Maybe they’ll die a little earlier from diseases associated with ASARCO’s chemicals: brain cancers, leukemia, multiple sclerosis,” she told city representatives at the public meeting.

Representatives from Geltmore Aldea refused an interview with the media after their presentation at Tuesday’s council meeting.

O’Rourke told ABC-7 the developer would have to get environmental clearance before building. “There’s no loops that they can jump through; there’s no steps that they can skip. They’re going to have to develop this to a safe and sustainable standard.”

He added that the neighboring Montecillo development, which already broke ground, has received a letter of clearance from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and a letter from environmental engineers who took soil samples on the property.

O’Rourke said the city will monitor the progress of the new development. “We’re paying more attention to it because it’s closer to the ASARCO property, as we should, and you know we’ll just have to keep an eye on it as it goes through these different points of review.”