A nearly 50-acre site on the northwest side of El Paso may soon be the home to a new Amazon fulfillment center.
Members of the El Paso City Council have given their approval to selling the site in question for just under $19 million to a company that has been previously involved in Amazon facility projects.
That company is VTRE Development, which is owned by the Kansas City-based development company Van Trust Real Estate. Seven years ago that company completed the development and construction of an 813,000-square-foot fulfillment center for the online retail giant in north Las Vegas.
The vacant desert site is located in a mixed residential commercial section of the city off Paseo del Norte and a block to the east of Interstate 10.
In approving the property sale, council members also reserved the right to buy the land back should the property remain undeveloped five years from now.
The land in question exists within a defined Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, a designation used to support infrastructure costs for newly built projects.
According to city records, the project, which would be moving forward without the support of any city incentives, will see VTRE paying for a new traffic signal in the area, an endeavor that could cost around $600,000.
The project site is on the other side of the 63-acre West Town Marketplace, which opened in 2017, and to the north of the upscale Three Hills residential community.
An exact future use of the land, whether by Amazon or another entity, has not yet been disclosed.
By Garry Boulard
