Some two years after the City of El Paso decided against building a multi-purpose arena in a historic neighborhood called Duranguito, a move is underway to restore some of the structures in that same neighborhood.
Not long after plans for the arena were announced in the fall of 2016 a series of lawsuits were filed to stop the project, arguing that as a historic neighborhood, Duranguito should be preserved.
In 2022 the City withdrew its plans for putting the structure in Duranguito. In recent months a proposal has been studied calling for the arena to go up instead on a site near the old downtown Union Depot station.
Meanwhile, the City has been trying to decide what to do with nearly two dozen structures it had earlier purchased in Duranguito. To that end, a Request for Information may soon be issued asking for input on what to do with those structures.
The RFI notes that structures in the area could be subject to adaptive reuse, a process that may include the “renovation and rehabilitation of an existing building with a transformation of use.”
The RFI has a submission deadline of March 29.
Historians say Duranguito’s roots reach back to the mid-19th century. Most of the one and two-story structures still in existence were built between the 1890s and 1920s.
In 2016, the El Paso Times noted that Duranguito is the site of the city’s “last-standing former brothel, a fire station designed by famed architect Henry Trost, the home of a lawyer who arranged Pancho Villa’s surrender, and a former Chinese laundry dated to 1900.”
By Garry Boulard