el paso school project scheduled for construction this fall

 A project that is seeing the consolidation of three elementary schools in the Milagro Hills neighborhood of El Paso is expected to see work begin in September.

Paid for out of a $668 million bond approved by voters in 2016, the combined new construction and demolition project will cost $28.5 million to complete.

Officials with the El Paso Independent School District, after a series of public input meetings, decided that rather than updating and modernizing three existing elementary schools it would be more cost-effective to combine them at one site.

Those schools are the Crosby Elementary School at 5411 Wren Avenue; Dowell Elementary School at 5249 Bastille Avenue; and the Schuster Elementary School at 5515 Ruth Avenue.

The project, as designed by the architectural firm of Vigil & Associates, which has offices in Las Cruces, will see the Dowell site both updated and expanded.

That one-story structure was opened in 1959, in a growing northeast section of town just then experiencing rapid suburban home construction.

The new two-story school will put an emphasis on collaborative space and will go up on the western side of the Dowell site.

The facility will be named the Coach Archie Duran Elementary School, in honor of Arcadio “Archie” Duran, an EPISD track coach who died last year as a result of a school bus accident.

The project has now gone through the schematic design and design development phase.

EPISD officials have said that they are committed to seeing all 2016 bond projects completed within a 5-year time frame.

By Garry Boulard