Triple A Baseball Coming to El Paso! (Commerce, San Diego: new home, to buy)

[mistabinks]

A lot of good information coming out of Steve Kaplowitz's Sports Talk.

Regarding City Hall:

It was either a 19 million dollar renovation versus a 30 million dollar completely new and modern building.

Fact: City Hall is not a perfectly good and functional building

[Ms Kitty 98]

The next phase for the new baseball franchise is up to the Pacific Coast League officials to approve El Paso as a destination for relocation of a franchise team here on the borderland. It's another major hurdle that will make or break the whole process pending on how these Pacific Coast League officials perceive El Paso as a pro baseball city. The hotel motel tax increase of 17% to help finance the building of the stadium will be up to the voters, I just received my voters registration card yesterday in the mail. And since I want El Paso to rock, my vote will be a for sure Yes.
As for city hall that was built during Mayor Raymond Salazar administration era, sad to see you go, the city was really never able to develop the entire city hall property. As the city once wanted to build a Hyatt Regency next to city hall and build a promenade plaza over the Bataan Memorial to connect city hall with the civic center.
Those dreams never materialized and I also suspect that the owners of those railroad tracks that go underneath downtown El Paso are not city hall friendly, as that Bataan Memorial is really more downtown blight than it is to honor those that died in that death march during WWII.
19 million dollars to renovate the existing city hall? that could have been a possibility, the building is still structurally sound, and 30 million dollars wont build you much, not enough to house 640+ city employee's in this time and age, building cost are way much higher.
But for now lets move forward and keep our fingers crossed that all the cards fall into place and that by the year 2014, El Pasoans will be lining up early to buy their tickets to get inside the new ballpark.

[Ms Kitty 98]

Here is a link related to what others are saying outside from El Paso,
Tucson Padres on the Move... to El Paso? - Gaslamp Ball

[Chuco]

What an awesome day it was. Hopefully within two years time, many of us El Pasoans will be spending some of our summer evenings in downtown watching our team play in our new stadium. Man, I can't wait!

My brother works at city hall so he will be one of those people that will be moved temporarily til the city builds a new city hall building. He says he doesn't mind since he's happy that we will be getting our own AAA team, he's also hopeful that a new modern city hall will likely be way better than the building he works at now. Over the years he has heard lots of complaints about the current building and also lots of rumors about a replacement for city hall, so he knew this was going to happen soon.

[Ms Kitty 98]

Well at least we know that city hall is not bullet proof, and if and when they build the next city hall, I hope they build it the right size so that all city departments fit under one roof with plenty of room for future growth. Same thing goes for the new stadium, I always knew that city leaders from the Johnathon Rogers administration era made a terrible mistake by building Cohen stadium in Northeast El Paso. Downtown El Paso is the heart of the city and downtown is where all civic,entertainment,financial,government buildings including sports facility's should be located,not favoring anyone's own particular neighborhood or district.And lets not forget the county when they built the court house, they kept scaling down the original building plans only to find out in a few short years that they needed more court room office space.
So our new baseball stadium and maybe even the new downtown arena should be built the right size for El Paso's future is now.

[mistabinks]

Looks like the team is going to be called the El Paso Padres.

[katzpaw]

I believe their Tucson nickname is "The Pads" ...so....
ePads
El Pads
El Pados...

[Ms Kitty 98]

El Paso Missions, after the historic lower valley missions!
Padres De El Paso
El Paso Star-Padres
El Paso Sol Padres
El Paso Padres
El Paso Tejanos?

[Chuco]

Originally Posted by mistabinks

Looks like the team is going to be called the El Paso Padres.

I saw that as well on several sites. I'm fine with that, our team will likely be the San Diego Padres triple A affiliate for a few years. But what if the EP Padres and their parent team the SD Padres decide to go different ways and we end up with another team as our MLB affiliate? Will they change the team name or keep it Padres?

[mistabinks]

I can't wait to be sipping on a margarita while watching the El Paso Padres!

Decision on Triple-A baseball team for El Paso may come this week - El Paso Times