Submission to designate buidling in the ‘Durangito’ neighborhood as historic on hold

The Texas Historical Commission met Friday to review its 2017 calendar and decided to hold off on the requests for “historical marker destinations” from El Paso County, Chris Florence with the THC told ABC-7.

Among the nine El Paso County requests on hold a building located on 212 W. Overland Street in the Duranguito neighborhood that is just south of the Downtown convention center, is being considered as a potential site for the new Downtown arena.

The move has drawn heavy opposition from historians who value the history of the buildings in the neighborhood and by residents who will be forced to relocate. Some property owners in the area have told ABC-7 they are willing to sell.

Jack Chapman and Richard Dayoub, with the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce, sent a letter to Rob Brinkman, the THC’s coordinator for the Historical Markers Program. In the letter, Chapman and Dayoud state the
official Texas Historical Marker application submitted for the building at 212 W. Overland Avenue was “submitted by a member of the El Paso CHC, but not properly reviewed and approved by the El Paso CHC as a whole.”

But Bernie Sargent, Chair of the El Paso County Historical Commission says the commission is following guidelines.

“It’s the way things operated long before I got involved with the CHC and we continued to follow the procedures that I inherited,” Sargent said.

The building at 212 W. Overland is in the Duranguito neighborhood.

Dayoub and Chapman said the El Paso CHC “failed to publish notice of a meeting, failed to publish an agenda for the meeting that included the consideration of the application, failed to record minutes of a meeting that included a quorum was present or that consideration of the application was open to public comment, and failed to take or record a vote on submission of the application to the THC and therefore may very well have violated the Texas Open Meeting.”

Florence said the issue factored into the THC’s decision. “(The requests) were held back due to community feedback and pending issues regarding the county commission’s compliance with the Texas Open Meetings Act. The THC should be able to reconsider these applications at its next meeting in April,” Florence said.

The decision was disappointing for the commission. The postponement of the submissions wasn’t only for the building located on West Overland Street but other locations as well.

“I’m disappointed because the markers committee works very hard on these markers. We have set a precedent here in the state of Texas,” Sargent said.

“Our recommendation to council, one of them, one of several, is: let’s proceed and get the convention center off the table for the time being and focus on the arena, which is what they were charged to do,” Dayoub told ABC-7 earlier this week.

Friday, Dayoub said the chamber was alerted to the actions of the El Paso CHC by some of its own members who are involved in historic preservation. “Some board members who are involved with historic preservation and other initiatives contacted our leadership to say you might want to be aware of this … some individuals were expediting this particular designation to make it more difficult to negotiate with the property owners in the Union Plaza area for the site for the arena,” Dayoub said.

Dayoub went on to say “this falls in line with the lack of training that the members of the historic society have and goes back to their failure to abide by their rules in terms of engagement, quorums, all that stuff.”

“The whole community is behind (the arena) but for a few people we are just going to bring this to a screeching halt? I don’t think that makes a lot of sense,” Dayoub added.

The Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce supports the construction of a Downtown arena and is against a proposal to build the arena at the current site of the Downtown convention center, which is just north of the Duranguito neighborhood. “Construction of a multi-purpose arena in the Convention Center’s footprint could be harmful to businesses surrounding the convention center, including hotels who have recently received state and local incentives,” the chamber said in its resolution.