I got the tip for this post from one of our blog readers. I hope that you all will continue to feel free to point things out to me.
While you are busy filling out your EPISD facility option surveys the school district has already decided what to do about their central office.
The city owns the land that the central office sits on now and wants the district to move. District administrators have told us that the move will probably cost $40 million. With the former chief financial officer of the city now on the district’s appointed board of managers we should all wonder what the $40 million will turn into.
The city doesn’t need the land, it just wants it. Don’t be surprised if someday we learn of another sweetheart deal relating to the land. In the meantime the school district’s taxpayers will just have to pay for the expense of moving.
The district would have us think that with the expected drop in enrollment and the possibility of closing schools maybe the central office people could be moved into one or more of the closed schools.
Not when they’ve already made up their minds
The district recently issued request for qualifications number 15-027. The RFQ seeks statements of qualifications from architects. Submitting a response to this RFQ will cost the firms both time and money, so no one will be happy if the district decides not to build the new building.
As far as re-using old buildings, the RFQ instead specifies:
Construction of new administration building with site improvements.
Location: 4900 Woodrow Bean Drive, El Paso, Texas 79924.
Legal Description: Being A Portion of Lot 5, Block 6, Castner Range Subdivision #1, City of El Paso, El Paso County, Texas
Land Area: Approx. 28.0 Acres
Proposed Personnel Capacity: 500 employees
Proposed Building Area: 120,000 Sq. Ft. (Approximate); 2 Floors; Separate Police Services Building.
So they evidently have decided to build a new building instead of using old schools. They have decided where the building will be and how big it will be.
The district does not have to hire an architect or build the new building, but if the architectural firms spend the money to go through the selection process and the district does not build the building the district will have wasted a lot of private firm’s money. People will not be happy.
The district evidently thinks that the central office needs 500 employees. I suspect that many of the teachers would like to see that number closer to 200.
And as a loyal reader/commenter pointed out the other day the RFQ does not tell the potential architects to make plans for moving our existing planetarium. The planetarium is an educational facility. I guess that can just be torn down like the city did Insights.
In the meantime fill out your surveys so that you can be ignored. Moving into old schools or acquiring one of El Paso’s many vacant warehouses evidently is not in the cards.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
I DO. . . .know this:
The EPISD offices at the airpost sit on very very very expensive land now.
The trend is to lease that expensive land to a hotel for 50 or 99 years at an unbelievable rate and move whatever was there to a cheaper land location.
That’s been the trend in other cities.
So, maybe the city thinks it can recoup all moving and rebuilding costs by leasing that vacant land to a huge Hotel chain.
The EPISD does not need need to be on expensive land and when it was first built I kinda wondered. . . . really. . . . near the airport.
Shouldn’t that be for major hotels and car rental agencies?
But, I guess I was the only one “wondering” about that.
(When I see most . . . anything. . . . I wonder, what will that be or need to be in 20-30 years.)
(My dad thought that way also, when offered the triangle for what is now the land at Montana and Trowbridge that a Mimco center sits on for $100. per year lease back in 1960 for a 99 year lease.)
Well, my dad did not take that offer back then !
Dammit !
Well, OK. . . . .
As Ive watched it become a retail shopping center with Luby’s, a new Walgreens and a strip center from Mimco.
So, I guess we were “Futurists” . . . they call it now.
At some point land becomes more valuable than its current use.
So, after many calulations, can it be determined if it is worthwhile to “tear it all down” and move everything.
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Thinking now. . . . thinking back. . . .
I think it was $100. PER MONTH, (instead of $100. per year) for the lease of the triangle of land at Montana and Trowbridge.
But, whatever. . . . we did not HAVE an extra $100. per month back them !
So, that would make it $1200. per year lease.
Ok.
Back then, if you did not have a Cigar-Smoking Banker in your pocket (one of the good ol’boys) at a local bank, you didnt build or get financing for anything.
Most banks were run by current and past cigar smoking. . . city officials, mayors, etc., and if you hadn’t been bribing them or “donating” to their campaigns, you did not get financing.
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From what I understand in the 1950’s-1960’s, most all bankers were members of the “Good Ol’Boys Club”: (includes the Empire Club at 5 points on Montana, the El Paso Sheriffs Posse and the Shiners.) El Paso was built on Bribes. They pretty much excluded Hispanics, Asians and blacks.
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$100 per month? That’s absurd, this contract should not be valid and should be investigated! The City needs to find a way to revise this contract to fair market value.
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When the original EPISD lease was signed, the land was not worth that much. It was a warehouse district, as was most of Airways. Remember the Zork Lumber warehouse near I10 which is now Famous Dave’s? The entire section along Airways and the street that runs parallel to it were warehouse and car dealers (Dick Poe Dodge was there for years).That is why the railroad still runs through that section. There are still railroad tracks in front of the EPISD offices.
The land was so cheap in fact, that Levi Strauss had one of it’s sweatshops there in the land now being proposed for a high end hotel.
Brutus is right that the planetarium needs to not be forgotten and needs to be added to the RFQ. That is a community building as much as it is an EPISD one. The public needs to stand up for that.
What is very curious is the same land also houses the Region Service Center, which was given a lease extension until 2023. If the Service Center can stay until 2023, why can’t the school district offices be afforded the same courtesy?
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Very curious indeed.
Brutus
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