This post is not intended to highlight an event or present facts.
The post reflects my opinion.
I think that naming a restaurant in the new ball park “City Hall Grill” is a horrible act.
I can only think that the name was chosen either out of insensitivity or a desire to make an “in your face” statement.
Either way it will be a constant reminder to those of us who while not opposed to the new ball park were opposed to tearing down city hall.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
We’ve all been burned on this one and the Hunts and Foster are making sure we won’t forget who really runs the city. It is like opening a hookah lounge on Ground Zero; extremely bad taste.
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It’s impossible to write satire about real life such as this! If they wanted to memorialize City Hall, how about a tombstone at third base?
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It could read: “R.I.P. TRUST IN OUR GOVERNMENT”
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Seems one of the explanations about this stated that they wanted to recognize, memorialize, or something like that , the City Hall site. I can understand clueless out-of-towners who may have wanted to pay some kind of respects, but we all know that the owners, the in-towners, city personnel were not at all clueless about all the controversy involved in the demolition of City Hall. If anybody wanted to pay respects to City Hall, then they should never have demolished it. This is a hypocritical slap in the face… disrepectful, and insensitive to the people who wanted to save City Hall.
I also feel that the choice of the name Southwest University Ballpark is another slap in the face to those of us who testified that money would be better invested in educational endeavors, like a dental school, a law school, or something similar that would allow the young people of El Paso to pursue a professional career without leaving this city. This was partly in response to the common arguments of “there’s nothing to do in El Paso” and the “brain drain” problem that were being cited as reasons to build the ballpark. Well, they gave us our new educational institution…mockingly, in name only…a “university,” in fact, named after a diploma mill that somehow has millions of profits, garnered through taxpayer funded GI Bills and Pell grants and such, to put up for the naming rights over the next 20 years. Otra buena cachetada!
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But what about all those hot dog jobs? Surely that gives them something to look forward to after getting their EPISD diplomas?
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The City Hall Grill name in no way relates to baseball nor does it add to the theming or the entertainment value. It’s not even like the former city hall was a legitimate historical building.
The name is purely a poke in the eye to those who opposed the project. That’s what you get when you have a team owned by people with plantation owner mentalities and managed by a bunch of smug carpetbaggers.
While we’re on the subject of names, let’s move on to the stadium naming rights. Selling the ballpark naming rights to Southwest “University” is both disgusting and unfortunately appropriate, particularly given that one of the stated objectives of the stadium was to instill civic pride. Southwest is a glorified for-profit votech school — not a university. You can paint stripes on a pony, but that doesn’t make it a zebra.
Seeing Southwest (I refuse to call it a university) on the ballpark is a constant reminder that El Paso is a city with few good job opportunities for people holding degrees from true universities. In a way, however, Mountainstar and Southwest are a good fit. Taxpayers are subsidizing the for-profit ball club. Schools like Southwest also receive the majority of their income from the government which provides the financial aid for the students these schools aggressively recruit. Some say that these kinds of schools prey on the less fortunate.
Mountainstar and Southwest do have shared values. They both value taxpayer dollars as way to create personal wealth.
The media was quick to point out the typical magnitude of minor league stadium title rights. What they failed to point out, however, was that (a) in many minor league cities, the City actual retains or shares in the naming rights income, and (b) the annual revenue that Mountainstar is likely receiving from the naming rights alone is probably two to three times the annual base rent it is paying for EXCLUSIVE year-round control of the ballpark.
Even if the Chihuahuas were to win a championship in their first year, it would be a hollow victory for El Paso.
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We had the best CC, CM and CFO Mountainstar money could buy and they bought it for us.
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So, let me get this right. We spend tens of millions of dollars to build a professional AAA baseball park which was intended to help improve El Paso’s image and then Mountainstar puts a name on it that gives it the appearance of being a college stadium. This just proves once again that this is all about money and lining the pockets of Mountainstar’s owners — not about truly helping to create a positive image for El Paso. Both Mountainstar and Southwest are being so coy that neither party will even say who approached whom on the deal, according to El Paso Inc.
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One other question – what will they do to memorialize the Insights Sciene Museum? Name one of the restrooms after it?
The op-ed in the Times is a surprise…I had not put together the Foster pieces so clearly. I hope that their decision to print it might mean some better reporting as well…
http://www.elpasotimes.com/opinion/ci_25352001/shape-policy-expertise-not-campaign-gifts?source=nav
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The “strategic giving” referenced in that op-ed piece is exactly what Foster and Hunt have been doing locally for personal gain. A poet once wrote that the greatest treason is to do the right thing for the wrong reason.
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Next up: they can name the latrines, the El Paso taxpayer.
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