Historic Downtown El Paso building for sale after housing plan nixed
A Miami development company that renovated the historic Hotel Paso Del Norte has nixed a proposed apartment or condominium project at an historic property near the hotel in Downtown El Paso.
The Meyers Group instead has put the long-vacant, 108-year-old Krupp building on the market for $1.05 million.
It’s at 117 W. Overland Ave., across the street from the hotel, catty-corner from the El Paso convention center, and across the street from the Duranguito neighborhood, where a city plan for an arena was dumped because of opposition. The Sun Metro streetcar line runs in front of the decaying building.
High construction costs and high interest rates don’t make this a good time to build apartments or condos in El Paso, said Alan Losada, the Meyers Group president and chief operating officer.
El Paso rents don’t make it financially feasible for the Meyers Group to build new apartment complexes here, Losada told the El Paso Times in June 2023 after it canceled plans for a 297-unit apartment complex on vacant land at 201 Mountain Shadow Drive in West El Paso. The five acres remain on the market.
The company is focusing on building apartment projects in Florida, where the market for such projects is better than in El Paso, he said.
Krupp building demolition contemplated
In late 2021, the company unveiled a concept for a 40-unit apartments or condos project with ground-floor retail spaces at the Overland property.
Company officials also were looking at the possibility of demolishing the building because it’s in bad shape, Losada said at the time. City officials found serious fire- and building-code violations in the building in 2018.
El Paso real estate broker Juan Uribe, whose firm, Team Juan Uribe Real Estate, put the building on the market Sept. 4, said he’d like to see a buyer who would remodel it.
“Why would you demolish a Henry Trost (designed) building? It has good bones,” and city, state, and federal tax incentives are available to help pay for restoration, Uribe said.
Trost is the late, iconic El Paso architect who designed dozens of Downtown’s historic buildings, many of which are vacant and in need of renovation.
Trost designed the original portion of the Hotel Paso Del Norte, which the Meyers Group renovated at a cost of more than $100 million.
“I love history. I’d be upset if someone demolished this building,” said Uribe, a member of the Texas Historical Foundation board.
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Selling Downtown El Paso buildings has not been easy in recent years, but they sell if the price is right, Uribe said.
For example, River Oaks Properties, a large El Paso shopping center developer, was able to sell its remaining Downtown portfolio of nine retail buildings last year, Uribe noted. A company tied to Dallas-based Parking Systems of America bought the buildings.
Downtown building bought in bankruptcy auction
Stuart Meyers, chief executive officer of the Meyers Group, bought the Downtown Krupp building in a 2018 bankruptcy-court auction for $875,000. It was one of 13 Downtown buildings sold in El Paso businessman William “Billy” Abraham’s two bankruptcy cases. Most of those buildings were dilapidated and vacant.
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The Krupp building is appraised for tax purposes at $151,400 by the El Paso Central Appraisal District.
Preservation Texas in 2021 put the building on its annual list of Most Endangered Places. Haymon Krupp, a Jewish immigrant, had it constructed to house his clothing factory and dry goods business, according to the Trost Society.
Vic Kolenc may be reached at 915-546-6421; [email protected]; @vickolenc on Twitter, now known as X.
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