UTEP-Fabens Airport lease likely won’t be finalized by the end of year

Details are still being ironed out, but the deal between El Paso County and the University of Texas El Paso for upgraded use of the Fabens airport is still on.

The county just got back the proposed lease from the University of Texas System officials earlier this month. It put a bit of a damper on the original expectations, officials said.

“We had hoped to have it ready by the spring semester,” said County Judge Veronica Escobar (D). “That was very ambitious. You all know that the UT system held onto the lease for a while, or they were drafting the lease. We didn’t get it until last week. So, highly unlikely the lease would be done by the end of the year anyway.”

Coupled with some delays from policy and operations reviews by the Texas Department of Transportation for the currently little-used airport, the start of the lease could be pushed until April.

Since the airport had basically been operating as a private airport under the lease to the fixed-base operator previously, TXDOT has asked for updates to things like an operational manual for the future.

“We just want to make sure, that with TXDOT, we are addressing all of their concerns so that there’s no problems going forward,” Escobar said.

County leaders reported UTEP is fine with that timeline to get things moving and start work on the aerospace and design facilities to be build there.

UTEP will also be looking to start construction on other facilities like storage bunkers and launch pads on land next to the airport in the near future.
asked for use of other county land or warehouse space to store some material while that construction gets going.