Expansion plan could lead to demolition of El Paso Rhinos’ home

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- The General Services Administration, a part of the federal government proposed an expansion plan for the Bridge of the Americas at a community meeting on Tuesday.

Each of the three proposed options would greatly impact and could get rid of the county events center all together.

"Everything that we've worked for would be gone," Vice President of the EL Paso Rhinos, Tyler Deloach said. "We've put a lot of investment into this building a lot of time blood, sweat and tears to make this building what it is and so to lose it would be awful." 

The events center is home to the El Paso Rhinos and is the only ice rink from Odessa to Albuquerque open year round.

Option 1 requires the least land around the bridge and would mean the rink would still exist but it would limit any potential expansions they had planned.

Option 2 is similar but it would purchase the land of the events center and therefore demolish the home of the El Paso Rhinos.

Option 3 would also demolish the events center as well as the county coliseum.

"I do not like for people to come in and determine that they know better than what we should and what we're trying to accomplish," County Judge Ricardo Samaniego said. "We're being asked to impose a situation that is going to impact the rest of the community and then we have to make up for that impact and I don't think that's a fair proposition." 

"Our hope is nothing happens, we want to stay here and we want to expand and we're unable to do that with any of the proposals," Deloach said.

The rink welcomes in about 20,000 people a week from youth hockey, adult hockey, high school hockey, figure skating, public skating, school field trips and fans at the Rhino games.

"We are not basketball we can not have an open gymnasium or we don't have a park we can go skate at," El Paso Figure Skating teacher, Ally Ye said. "If we no longer had this building our sport would be obsolete." 

Back in 2020 the horse barn turned rink earned $150,000 worth of upgrades by winning the Kraft Hockeyville USA Competition.

The Federal Government's proposals don't include compensation or relocation but the County Judge told ABC-7 it would have to pay the county for the land. Samaniego also said he'd rather see that money go towards creating a port system across all of the bridges.

"They're only thinking about their footprint and not how you connect to the rest of the community," Samaniego said. "We're going to have a really serious situation here if they continue to go without our feedback." 

The construction is scheduled to begin in 2027 with the renovations being completed by 2031. You can follow the project here.

The El Paso Rhinos are asking the community to fill out this form to try to keep the ice rink in place. The form needs to be filled out by April 11th and emailed to daniel.partida@gsa.gov. County officials told ABC-7 you can also reach out to Congresswoman Veronica Escobar.