Plans have been announced to bring back to life the first major shopping center in northeast El Paso.
Located at 8500 Dyer Street, the Sunrise Shopping Center, built at a cost of $1 million, was familiar to residents from miles around due to the modernistic 12-story blue pylon decorating the front of the property.
The center, once the home to an F.W. Woolworths store, as well as a Western Auto outlet and Gunning-Casteel drug store, fell on hard times more than a decade ago, and today has a just over 50% lease rate.
Now a Houston-based developer has announced plans to revitalize the 187,000 square foot center, which is comprised of three buildings.
Jerome Karam, chief executive officer of JMK5 Holdings LLC, has purchased the center, which sits on 72 acres, with the goal of extensively upgrading and modernizing the property.
According to its website, JMK5 specializes in “developing, revitalizing, and giving new life” to properties and buildings “once deemed beyond repair.”
The company earlier this year announced plans to update the Commodore on the Beach Hotel in Galveston, which was built in 1966, as well as the 30-year-old Mainland Crossing shopping center in Texas City.
Karam has said that the Sunrise Shopping center epitomizes the kind of project his firm most likes to take on, calling it an added value shopping center that “needs a lot of tender loving care.”
By Garry Boulard