Downtown Artspace project fails to get funding
The building of a highly-anticipated Downtown El Paso artist community is on hold after it failed to receive funding.
The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs has decided not to award tax credits to the Downtown Artspace project.
The idea when the City donated the land for the project was to have artists not only working, but living in the Artspace project on the corner of Missouri and North Oregon streets, right next door to the Doubletree Hotel.
It was expected to include 51 affordable units and 7,500 feet of multi-purpose, non-profit space.
The land, former home of the El Paso Saddleblanket Company, was donated by the City to the El Paso Community Foundation for the project.
Artspace had applied to the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs for more than a million dollars a year for 10 years, but ended up ranked the lowest out of six El Paso projects that applied in the urban category.
About 80-percent of the project depends on those tax credits, according to Community Foundation President Eric Pearson.
ABC-7 also spoke about the funding snub with City Rep. Cortney Niland, a big supporter of the Artspace project.
“I think everyone involved was disappointed,” Niland said. “But what we want to do is check to see is this project feasible, can we move forward, because what we want to do is focus on trying to get some of these residential projects successful and in our Downtown.”
“Even with that community will and all that support that we got, we didn’t have those points,” said Pearson. “Next year’s process, I’m told, will have more weighting toward that community support and community will.”
Local projects that did receive tax credit funding from TDHCA this year include:
Verde Palms, a Tropicana Homes 152-unit development on the East Side, The Villas at West Mountain, a 76-unit complex on the West Side by Investment Builders, Inc., and Montana Vista Palms, also by Tropicana, a 48-unit development on the far East Side.
Pearson said he was told those builders would not apply for those tax credits, clearing the way for Artspace. But they did anyway.
