Council awards contract for construction of Northgate Transfer Center

City Council approved moving ahead with the construction of the Northgate Transfer Center, which will be located next to the old Northpark Mall site at Wren and Diana.

The city is awarding Dantex Construction Co. a $10,639,000 contract. Most of this amount will be covered by grants, city officials said. The city’s financial portion will be about $2 million.

City officials said the bus terminal will have a parking garage so people can park and ride Sun Metro to other parts of the city.

Hunt Metro 31, a subsidiary of Hunt Communities, is leasing from the city the 31 acres next to the future transfer center. Its plan is to develop the property into a smart code community with shops, restaurants, lofts, apartments and a park.

This has been a long term effort. In 2011, the city spent $10 million to buy the land and demolish the old mall. Then it looked for a developer and City Council waived about $13 million worth of taxes and fees for Hunt to develop the land.

The City was approved for federal funding to build the terminal. “You have your transit on one side and you have your housing on the other side along with retail. So this will be the first of its kind in El Paso with the opportunity that we could have others in El Paso,” said City Rep. Carl Robinson, who represents the area.

“The transit center we have there now is really small and has outgrown its useful life,” Sun Metro Director Jay Banasiak said, “This is perfect to get grant money to build a bigger transit center. The second thing is to try and develop that Northgate area which has been a dilapidated mall for years. We torn that thing down years ago, and now we are finally going to build something there.”

The first phase of the project includes the reconstruction of Wren Avenue from Dyer Street to east of Shoppers Road. Construction is already underway. When completed, Wren will include sidewalks, landscaping, a median and pedestrian lighting. It will also give drivers access to the new transit terminal.

Construction of Northgate Transfer Center should be finished by 2017, according to city officials.