El Paso County halting progress of Downtown historical survey

The County of El Paso is pumping the breaks on the progress of its historical survey of Downtown El Paso and it all stems from a City ordinance causing confusion.

Last week, County Commissioners received a nearly 900-page draft of the historical survey of Downtown.

Commissioners decided to take a week to review it and also to check in with the City to see if its survey could potentially interfere with the City’s on-going litigation over the location of the downtown arena.

The County hired an architectural firm to survey areas of downtown stretching as far north as river avenue, as far south as the border, as far west as the union depot, and as far east as Cotton street.

The firm is recommending that the county apply for the areas south of I-10 to be nominated as a single historic district.

County officials were under the impression that if a building were located within that historic district, it would allow a property owner to apply for certain tax breaks without placing any additional regulations or burdens on the owner. However, this clashes directly with a City of El Paso code of ordinance, and because of that, the county is waiting to get clarification from its attorneys and the City attorney before going forward.

The code of ordinance in question states, “no person or entity shall construct, reconstruct, alter, change, remove, demolish or fail to maintain any permanent feature on a property listed as a Texas Antiquities Landmark or on the national register of historic places.”

County Commissioner David Stout told ABC-7 it is his understanding that the code of ordinance would only apply to specific buildings that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and not all buildings located within the potential historic district.

“They want to make sure that there is no confusion regarding that language because we want to make sure that we’re doing what we told people we would be doing from the very beginning,” Stout said.

A representative from the architectural firms says this delay could set them back about three months on their timeline because the National Register for Historic Places Review Board meets four times a year. The firm was on track to present its findings in September, but that deadline can no longer be guaranteed