Members of the El Paso City Council will soon be tasked with the question of what to do about an historic Hispanic neighborhood that has been the subject of countless debates and lawsuits for nearly a decade.
The Duranguito neighborhood dates to the 1850s and is made up of dozens of small one- and two-story houses and buildings deemed by architects and preservationists as culturally important.
In 2016, city officials announced that the neighborhood would be demolished to make way for a new 15,000-seat multi-purpose arena, a $180 million project to be funded via a bond approved by El Paso voters four years earlier.
That announcement sparked a series of seemingly endless legal actions on the part of those opposed to doing away with the neighborhood, with the El Paso City Council finally agreeing to search for a different site for the area.
In early 2025 the council issued a Request for Qualification asking for ideas on redeveloping Duranguito and the 17 properties in the neighborhood that are owned by the City.
In announcing that RFP, the city said it was looking for an “adaptive reuse plan” that would see new housing, ground floor retail, and green space at the site.
Early last month, the city announced that it had rejected several submissions to the RFP, with plans now in place to talk with two qualified bidders on why their submissions failed.
In a statement appearing in the publication El Paso Matters, Laura Cruz-Acosta, a spokesperson for the city, said, “Any proposed next steps will be brought back to City Council for consideration at a future public meeting.”
January 6, 2026
By Garry Boulard
Photo courtesy of City of El Paso
