El Paso City Hall Demolition Described

The demolition of El Paso City Hall to clear way for a downtown baseball stadium will take only eight seconds, city officials learned last week.

The west Texas city will issue $50.4 million of bonds supported by a voter-approved increase in the hotel occupancy tax to build the 9,000-seat minor league baseball stadium.

The implosion on April 14 will cut support beams holding up the 10-story structure, allowing it to fall into a tidy heap, said Alan Shubert, the city engineer in charge of the ballpark project.

The debris, estimated at 1,000 truckloads, will be removed within two weeks, Shubert told the city council in last week’s project briefing.

The stadium will be home to the former Tucson Padres of the Class AAA Pacific Coast League. The team will be renamed before it moves to El Paso after the 2013 season. The stadium is to be ready in April 2014.

The bonds will be issued by the City of El Paso Downtown Development Corp. The debt will be issued as special obligation bonds supported by annual appropriations to the corporation by El Paso from the city hotel tax and its share of stadium revenues.

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Texas
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