A large piece of property northwest of Downtown El Paso that used to belong to Asarco will soon become a part of the University of Texas at El Paso, USA Today reported yesterday. The University of Texas Board of Regents approved opening negotiations to purchase the 458-acre parcel for about $17 million. Some of the land is east of I-10 in the mountain area where the Miner soccer and softball fields are. The other portion of the land is across the freeway from UTEP, where the Asarco smokestack used to be. The parcel is desirable to the university because the campus is landlocked by businesses along Mesa Street to the east and by mountains to the northwest. University of Texas System officials should complete the purchase of the site in the next 30 to 60 days, and it’s not clear yet when the university’s new land will be developed. The Asarco site has a long, turbulent history in El Paso. A smelting plant started operations there in 1887. In 2005, Asarco, which then owned the El Paso smelter and scores of other polluted sites around the country, filed for bankruptcy.
