William Yarbrough FC Leon Goal Keeper talks about the team during 2016’s soccer match at Southwest University Park.
Mark Lambie – El Paso Times
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Whether a controversial Downtown multipurpose arena will ever get built is still up in the air, but that’s not stopping the owners of the El Paso Chihuahuas baseball team from pursuing another stadium in an effort to recruit a minor league soccer team.
Alan Ledford, president of MountainStar Sports Group, said the group is talking to city and county officials about getting financial help to build what likely would be a 7,500-seat stadium. That’s the same seating capacity as Downtown’s $78 million Southwest University Park, where the Chihuahuas play, and the city helped finance mostly with hotel taxes.
A new stadium is needed to get an El Paso team in the United Soccer League, or USL, Ledford said.
The league is adding expansion teams to form a third conference, most likely in 2019, and is looking at El Paso as a potential expansion city, according to a USL official.
The USL is "kind of like Triple-A baseball," of which the El Paso Chihuahuas are a part, for pro soccer, Ledford said.
MountainStar Sports Group President Alan Ledford at Southwest University Park in Downtown El Paso. The group is pursuing a United Soccer League expansion team and Downtown-area soccer stadium.
MountainStar in June 2014 announced plans to pursue a Major League Soccer, or MLS, team for El Paso. But the group discovered El Paso doesn’t fit the MLS’ metrics for a team, including TV market size, and having a certain number of corporate headquarters in the area, Ledford said.
"After talking to people in the professional soccer world, the commissioner of the MLS, and the USL, it became clear the USL would be a great fit for El Paso," Ledford said.
The USL has 30 teams, including teams in San Antonio, Phoenix, Reno, and even Edinburg, Texas, which entered the league in 2016.
It currently has five expansion teams: Las Vegas, Nashville, and Fresno, Calif., that will begin playing in 2018; and Austin and Birmingham, Ala., which will start playing in 2019.
The USL has set a 2020 deadline for all its teams to be in soccer-specific stadiums. And it prefers those stadiums be located in or near a city’s downtown, Ledford said.
Rendering of the proposed 10,000-seat soccer stadium to be built in Louisville for its United Soccer League team. The stadium is expected to cost about $40 million to build, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper.
MountainStar "would potentially get both the city and county involved" in building a soccer stadium, Ledford said.
"We are in ongoing discussions" with city and county officials, he said.
Problems with getting a proposed Downtown arena built" plays no factor in this," Ledford said.
MountainStar in September began an advertising campaign supporting the proposed $180 million multipurpose arena, approved by voters in a 2012 bond referendum.
The campaign is aimed at countering efforts by a group of El Paso preservationists and community activists, who are pushing to stop the city from putting the proposed arena in the Duranguito neighborhood, which is in the Union Plaza entertainment district, next to the Downtown convention center.
The fate of the project is tied up by a court battle between the city and some of the arena-site opponents.
More: Nearly a month after Duranguito demolition, volunteers keep watch at Chihuahua Street camp
Even as the arena debate boils, Ledford said he sees "enthusiasm in the community at large for the opportunity" for an El Paso soccer team and stadium.
Mayor Dee Margo declined an interview with the El Paso Times this week about the potential of the city getting involved with building a soccer stadium. Margo and other city officials were in Washington, D.C., attending the Association of the United States Army annual meeting.
Margo’s office issued a statement from the mayor confirming city officials have engaged in "preliminary conversations with MountainStar regarding a professional soccer team" for El Paso.
Former County Judge Veronica Escobar and County Commissioner David Stout, who represents the Central El Paso area, including Downtown, said they and other county officials have discussed the stadium idea with MountainStar officials.
MountainStar officials are "working with the county administrator, and they soon should have some type of more concrete plan to present to the court" about a proposed soccer stadium, Stout said this week from Mexico City, where he was on vacation.
"It may be a contentious issue in light of what is going on with the (Downtown) arena," Stout said.
"I definitely think on the county’s and my behalf (that) there will be complete transparency" in any soccer stadium plans that involve the county, Stout said.
"We don’t need to be shoving this down people’s throats. We need time for the public process," Stout said.
Stout opposes putting the city’s proposed multipurpose arena in the Duranguito neighborhood. But, he said, he’s not opposed to a Downtown sports arena.
An arena and soccer stadium would help revitalize Downtown by drawing more people to the area for games and other events, he said.
Esocobar, now running to represent El Paso in the United States Congress, agreed that the Downtown arena controversy makes it more difficult to get public support for a Downtown soccer stadium.
"You need public involvement and community buy-in, and I think it’s possible," Escobar said. "If the county did it (soccer stadium) alone, then the arena (issue) doesn’t need to be settled (first)."
"My preference would be a county soccer stadium," Escobar said. "But if not the county, then some kind of city-county collaboration on building it. The ideal revenue source would be hotel taxes" so that property owners don’t have to pay for it, she said.
"Soccer is such a huge hit in El Paso and our region. I think soccer would be bigger than baseball" for this area, she said.
The USL issued a statement that said league officials "have spoken to, and been extremely impressed with, the (El Paso) group spearheading the effort to bring the excitement of professional soccer to the region."
"We believe El Paso has all the ingredients to become home to a first-class professional soccer (team)," according to the USL statement.
Woody Hunt, speaking to news reporters in 2012 outside City Council chambers, and left to right in back, Josh Hunt, Paul Foster,and Alejandra De La Vega, owners of MountainStar Sports Group.
The statement added that MountainStar has a proven track record with its successful operation of the El Paso Chihuahuas.
The group also owns the FC Juárez Bravos soccer team across the U.S.-Mexico border. The Bravos periodically play games at Southwest University Park in El Paso.
MountainStar is owned by Woody Hunt, and his son Josh Hunt, who operate Hunt Companies, a national real estate development and property-management group based in El Paso; Paul Foster, founder of the former Western Refining company, which in June was sold to San Antonio-based Andeavor; and Foster’s wife Alejandra De La Vega Foster, who heads the Innovation and Economic Development Department for the state of Chihuahua, Mexico.
Ledford said MountainStar has spent the last three years looking at potential soccer stadium sites in and around the Downtown area.
"We have several (potential sites) that look promising. I am not prepared to talk about where," Ledford said.
Finding a site Downtown is challenging because not as much land is available as in other areas of the city, Ledford said.
The group also has looked at the former Asarco copper-smelter site just northwest of Downtown, Ledford said.
The University of Texas Board of Regents in late 2016 approved negotiating with the site’s trustee to buy almost 460 acres for UTEP’s expansion, including the main 210-acre site located between Interstate 10 and the Rio Grande, where Asarco operated a copper smelter for 126 years. Only 50 to 70 acres of the other rugged, hilly 248 acres, next to the UTEP campus, could be developed.
The former Asarco copper smelter site northwest of Downtown is one possible site being considered by MountainStar Sports Group for a proposed soccer stadium.
UTEP officials declined to discuss anything about the land until its purchased by the UT System.
However, UTEP President Diana Natalicio at a recent press conference offered to lease 200 acres of the Asarco site to Amazon, if it wanted to put its proposed second North American headquarters there, according to TV and print reports. The El Paso area and dozens of other metro areas around the country are expected to submit proposals in Amazon’s HQ2 competition.
The El Paso County Coliseum, located at 4100 E. Paisano in South Central El Paso, has been rumored as another possible soccer stadium site.
Commissioner Stout said he hadn’t heard that rumor, but, he said, the county can’t do anything with the coliseum until 2021 when its lease expires with the El Paso Sports Commission, which operates it for the county.
Ledford said having the USL team temporarily play in an existing El Paso stadium until a new one is built is not an option.
"Our focus is to be in a new stadium when (an El Paso team) starts in the league," he said.
Vic Kolenc may be reached at 546-6421; vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; @vickolenc on Twitter.
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