Next steps to baseball stadium

The city of El Paso will start working toward the baseball stadium as early as Friday. City engineers say they’re shooting to bring baseball to El Paso by April 2014.

They start drilling Friday to test the soil’s strength around City Hall. From now until March, they’ll be moving employees out of City Hall. But believe it for not, construction will begin before City Hall is demolished.

City engineer, Alan Shubert, is planning on imploding City Hall by March.

“They’re actually a great spectacle,” Shubert said. “We actually, we hope to make it as unexciting as we can. They’ve taken buildings down with buildings five feet away.”

But before they demolish it, they’ll need to move all 650 employees. Right now the city is looking at temporary locations for easilymovableemployees. These employees will start moving this year. IT personnel who depend on infrastructure will stay up until March, which is the estimated month of the demolition. Shubert said employee parking lots are available right now and he plans on stadium construction starting before the end of the year.

“We’re going to evacuate people early and as we evacuate floors we can start recycling and demolishing the interior of the building,” Shubert said. “There’s going to be as much recycling of this building as we possibly can.”

There are multiple contracts that still need signatures, and buildings that still need to be purchased before city hall employees will be in their permanent homes. The 801 Texas and Luther buildings will require a year’s worth of remodeling, Shubert said, while El Paso Times is pretty much ready for move in.

Shubert said he’s looking at various places around town, including the airport to place employees temporarily.

For now, residents can start scoping out a front row seat to the fireworks.