A panoramic picture shows Interstate 10 right after the smokestacks fall. The cloud of dust followed the same path. (Sarah Duenas/Borderzine.com)

A pang of sorrow hit as the ASARCO smokestacks came tumbling down

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EL PASO – The skyline in El Paso changed forever on Saturday April 13 when the two ASARCO smokestacks imploded leaving an empty space, a day prior to the demolition of City Hall. The stacks fell in slow motion, as if slowly saying goodbye to their longtime home. Viewing the demolition from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) parking lot across from Interstate 10, I reflected on the experience I had writing a story on the last-ditch efforts to save the stacks. The stacks had a profound historical impact on the city and many people wanted to stop the demolition. The first event I attended was a protest lead by El Paso AWARE, an organization that focused on stopping the demolition until proper testing was done.

El Paso's City Hall demolition. (Ken Hudnall/Borderzine.com)

And it all came tumbling down

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EL PASO — El Paso erected a 10-story office tower in 1979 to be this fast-growing West Texas city’s new City Hall. At 9 a.m. on April 14 that multi-million dollar edifice came tumbling down in a planned implosion making way for a very controversial baseball park. Numerous individuals who worked at various times in and around that iconic building have been pumped for every possible story to fill newspaper columns and would-be experts spouted second- and third-hand information during interviews. The long and the short of it is that El Paso is now a little bit poorer due to the destruction of another piece of history to make way for the personal aggrandizement of certain prominent individuals. This building symbolized the promise that this city had in the seventies and still has today.

Saving Luis Jimenez’ gators — El Pasoans won’t let go of a beloved city centerpiece

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EL PASO — Downtown El Paso could soon lose one of its most beloved landmarks, created by one of the city’s most famous artists if a plan to renovate San Jacinto Plaza is approved and funded by the city council. Luis Jimenez’s fiberglass sculpture, “Los Lagartos” has stood at the center of the plaza since 1995, would be replaced by shrubbery trimmed in the shape of alligators in the renovation plans donated by Mills Plaza Properties, owned by prominent El Paso businessman Paul Foster. El Paso art historian Miguel Juarez is spearheading the movement to keep the statue in the city’s plans. “The alligators are the soul of El Paso,” Juarez said. “Historically the plaza was a meeting place.