Special Report: What’s the real cost of the Downtown ballpark?

A million here, a million there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

With the help of the City’s chief financial officer, Carmen Arrieta-Candelaria, ABC-7 is looking at just how many millions the City’s Downtown ballpark is costing taxpayers.

“We’re ready, we’re set and we’re excited as a community as a city to bring this venue to our people here in el paso,” Arrieta-Candelaria said. But to get here, “There were definitely a lot of hurdles that needed to be cleared.”

The first of which was to find a new place to call home.

The City purchased the El Paso Times building for $13.7 million, building at 801-811 Texas for the City’s one stop shop for $12.5 million, and the Mulligan building was donated by Chihuahuas owner Paul Foster but the City still spent $13.3 million renovating it.

So, the total cost is $39.5 million.

“I think it does make sense for us to have three different facilities,” Arrieta-Candelaria. “They are close enough for us to call a quick meeting or run over to an office.”

But before moving into those offices they had to move out of the old City Hall at a cost of $3.9 million – including moving out and moving in.

“And some rental expense, some refurbishing the site … paying the movers and moving expenses, things like that,” Arrieta-Candelaria said.

It was just over one year ago that City Hall came crashing down at a cost of $2.5 million.

Throw in another $2.1 million on a parking lot and moving the traffic management center and you get a grand total of $48 million.

“We would’ve had to make significant investments into City Hall already,” Arrieta-Candelaria said. “In fact, we had been planning to do that, so we took that investment and put it into 3 other buildings the city now owns plus we have a site that is going to produce income. i think from an economic standpoint it made a lot of sense.”

That site that will produce income is the new ballpark.

“The total amount with the City and MountainStar Sports Group is $76.145,” Arrieta-Candelaria said. “The City’s ballpark budget is capped at $64 million so anything beyond that is on MountainStar.”

So if you add $48 million to the $64 million and you get $12 million.

But we aren’t done yet.

Remember the City had to finance that debt.

The City plans to refinance that debt if terms are favorable in the future but for now the interest on that debt equals 76.5 million which, over the course of 30 years, brings grand total to $188.5 million.

Keep in mind, $30 million of that $188.5 million came out of the general and capital funds which are partially comprised of taxpayer dollars.

The rest is coming from other sources, such as the 50 cents the City gets for every ticket sold, the hotel occupancy tax, which has already generated more than $2 million dollars, the $400,000 in rent it gets from MountainStar each year, a split of parking on game days and increased sales tax revenue.

Ultimately, Arrieta-Candelaria believes all those things combined will generate more money than is needed to pay off the ballpark debt which in turn would be put toward the general fund.