Cost To Tear Down Destroyed, Abandoned Building May Double

The projected cost of demolition for the old abandoned apartment building that burned on Mesa Street last week may double.

And that has city leaders talking tough about being harder on the owners of run-down buildings in El Paso.

The cost of demolition estimate has gone from $150,000 to $350,000, which by the way, comes out of taxpayers pockets. And that led some on Council today to take aim at negligent propery owners.

“It goes all the way back to the year 2000,” Mayor John Cook said of the building. “I was on that Council that actually condemned the building.”

Cook said he tried actually tried to buy the building three years ago.

“We were worried about exactly what happened,” Cook said, “the building would have a fire and be destroyed.”

And now, since the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has determined it may contain asbestos, it could cost as much as $350,000 to haul away the debris of a property valued at only about $100,000.

“This has been sort of a chronic issue in this community,” City Manager Joyce Wilson said. “The tools we’ve had to this point have been really limited so I do think that we need to look at legislative strategies.”

Others agreed.

“This certainly isn’t the only building in this type of condition with this type of history,” City Rep Steve Ortega said, after forming a committee to address the situation. “You have some beautiful buildings that are quite frankly owned by negligent property owners. I want to get as tough as we can on those property owners.”

Ortega said one big problem is the way abandoned properties are appraised.

“In this case, the value was just the value of the land because the property itself wasn’t being used,” Ortega said. “And that really doesn’t do anything to encourage buildings to go into adaptive re-use, because there’s little incentive for the property owner, because their taxes are so low, to do anything with their properties.”

The Mesa Street property was valued at only $109,000 by the Central Appraisal District (CAD) because it was not being used. That meant the property owner, DDDG Investments, was paying less than $3,000 a year in taxes. And that, Ortega said, is the root of the problem with many abandoned buildings here, including dozens in Downtown El Paso.