Scott Brocato:
Bob, let's start with the first story about the new amphitheater. The new amphitheater's developer used El Paso property to secure a $20 million loan for another Texas project.
Bob Moore:
Yeah, so this is a company called Venu, and they were awarded land and a bunch of incentives by the city of El Paso a couple of years ago in northeast El Paso to develop a 12,500-seat amphitheater at the old Cohen Center baseball stadium property, for those who remember that. And the project has been beset by delays. And Venu is a fairly new company, and it's kind of raising capital as it goes along to build not only this project the projects in a number of other cities. And they do already own the land from the city, but they haven't begun any real preparation on the site. And our reporter Diego Mendoza Moyer is looking to why this is being delayed.
It was originally set to open in 2027, and that's obviously not going to happen. And he found a lot of interesting documents. And the most important one was that a venue used that land to secure a $20 million loan from another company in Texas to continue building another one of its properties in McKinney, Texas, a suburb in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. They're paying 18% on that loan, and it was a short-term loan, 90 days that they have apparently now repaid. But it does point to kind of the ongoing uncertainty about this project. So Venu's priority is to finish the McKinney site, maybe opening it by early next year, and then turning its attention to El Paso.
But there's all kinds of warning signs that the community needs to be paying attention to. The most obvious is its stock value. It's a publicly traded company, and its stock value has declined by 90% in the last year, largely because it's not generating much revenue, and it has all of this debt and expenses in trying to build out these properties.
It's also worth noting that they had plans to build a similar venue in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and the city there canceled that deal and took the land back because of lack of progress. The city of El Paso hasn't talked about that. And frankly, the city's not in a position to take the land back because of the way they structured the contract.
So this is something that we'll continue to watch as we go forward. But if anybody was hoping to watch a concert at a new amphitheater next year in El Paso, that's definitely not going to happen. They're saying 2028 is their target year for opening.
Scott Brocato:
And the next story: a group linked to Meta data center supporters discloses $63,000 in El Paso election spending and is keeping donors secret.
Bob Moore:
So city council elections in El Paso are generally pretty quiet affairs. Not a whole lot of money gets pumped into it, but out of nowhere this week, these mailers started hitting in the district of City Representative Chris Canales. And apparently the mailers also went out in support of three other council candidates.
So the Canales one was particularly interesting: it makes all kinds of claims that aren't really supported by any details in the flyer. And it was a mystery group that called itself the Sun City Coalition. There are no campaign finance reports which are required in this kind of situation. We were able to track down the officers of this new company, which formed in September, and we reached out to them and asked them like, who's, you know, why haven't you disclosed this? What, you know, who's funding you? So they kind of quickly rushed a report through after we asked questions, but it only showed the expenditures, which totaled more than $63,000. and it's all for campaign mailers.
And they are saying they're not required to disclose their donors. Our research into Texas law indicates that's a questionable claim at best. So this is something that will continue to be in the news for some time. We're definitely going to try to keep trying to identify who is behind this effort.
One of the guiding principles of American elections is that the people have the right to know who's trying to influence their votes, and that's why we have these transparency laws that are constantly being manipulated or evaded around the country. And we're seeing a bit of that so-called dark money in these basically small little city council elections in El Paso.
Scott Brocato:
And finally, El Paso advocates say a pattern of silence led to a racist incident where youths dressed up as Ku Klux Klan and yelled racial slurs.
Bob Moore:
Yeah, so this was a big thing on social media over the weekend. A video had come out showing these kids marching down the street, chanting the N-word, about six or seven of them. So very disturbing. And it set off some interesting conversations in El Paso, and our reporter, Priscilla Totiyapungpraser, kind of looked into it.
And really, there are some tensions in the community. We have a fairly small black population, about 4%, but it's a significant part of our community. And many of those families feel like they're subject to discrimination, particularly from the Latino majority that don't understand the history of some things and like why people walking around in Klan robes might be so disturbing to blacks and why chanting the N word is seen as threatening.
It's a disturbing incident and one that needs to be fully discussed. And we have to have conversations in the community to talk about what this means. And I think this story is kind of a good first step toward that.
Scott Brocato:
And where can folks read about that story and the other stories and more?
Bob Moore:
Stay up to date with all the most important news in our community at elpasomatters.org.