The Mills Building: Landmark is Flagship for CEO’s Downtown Vision
by Rene Leon • photos by Perla Parra

Paul Foster is a man of many titles. He is a top CEO who with a net worth of $1.9 billion (yup, that’s with a b) is ranked by Forbes Magazine at No. 261 among the country’s 400 richest people. He is a generous philanthropist who has donated millions of dollars to the Sun City community, notably a $3 million contribution to UTEP for a basketball training facility and a $50 million donation to the new Texas Tech Health Sciences Center’s four-year medical school, now aptly named the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine.

And, Foster can now say he is one of the first downtown property moguls to ride the redevelopment wave as he has purchased three large downtown buildings and plans a major renovation for at least one of them.

Last year, he purchased the Anson-Mills Building, bordering the western side of San Jacinto Plaza, the mid-century Blue Flame Building across Texas Avenue from Bassett Tower and the Luther Building at the intersection of Mills and Campbell Streets.

On the drawing board for the Anson-Mills Building are Foster’s plans to renovate it from a pretty-on-the-outside-but-empty-on-the-inside ancient edifice to a hopefully vibrant complex with bustling retail and lifestyle spaces at ground level and first-class office space on the floors above.

Giving even more significance to the renovation of the historic building is the fact that the firm in charge of implementing Foster’s vision, Martinez & Johnson Architecture, is the same firm that handled another legendary revival – the rebirth of the Plaza Theatre. The D.C.-based firm specializes in historic renovations, with projects including the grand Boston Opera House and the elegant Paramount Theatre in Charlottesville, Va.

“From the outside, I want it took as close as possible to what it looked like when it was built,” Foster says of the late 19th-century building, “which is quite a bit different than the way it looks today.”

Foster also wants to integrate a 21st-century school of thought in the renovation process. “We want to make it as green as possible,” he says. “That’s part of the instructions that the architects have been given, that, within reason, we want to make every effort to make an environmentally-friendly building out of it.”

There are no specific types of businesses Foster is targeting to inhabit Anson-Mills, and he says those who are looking into moving into the building will have a vast blank canvas of an interior to work with as the building has been completely gutted. “It’s wide open right now,” he states. “In fact, there are no internal walls in the whole building. They’ve all been torn out.”

What is even more interesting about Foster’s plans for Anson-Mills – from first-floor retail to high-rise offices – is that his own company’s corporate offices probably won’t be occupying any part of that building, as he admits to the strong possibility that Western Refining may soon call another downtown icon home.

“I think it’s more likely that we will move into The Centre Building,” Foster says of taking his corporate offices from their current location on the refinery grounds in central El Paso to the awe-inspiring atrium-centered building that currently houses the El Paso Electric offices. He hopes for the first wave of Western employees to move in to Centre Building in November or December, though he would not specify how many employees that would be.

While Foster did not make full disclosure of an impending purchase of the Centre, sources inside the building, which sits directly behind Anson-Mills, say that El Paso Electric has already begun vacating its offices.

Moving a corporation’s headquarters to a different part of town is no easy task, but Foster says it’s a step that Western needs to take.

“I think, first and foremost, that Western is a significant part of this community from a business standpoint,” he states. “It is our home office, it is our corporate headquarters and El Paso’s our home and we feel that we need to have a major presence in Downtown El Paso.”

In addition to bringing business offices to the area, Foster envisions downtown needing some other components to thrive on its own, such as a corridor between the downtown area and the Paso Del Norte Bridge that provides “a nice, safe, clean avenue for people to move back and forth between Juarez and El Paso.”

Along with attracting pedestrian traffic between the U.S. and Mexico, Foster feels Downtown also needs to draw El Pasoans to the city center. “I think you just have to create something they’re interested in,” he says. “You have to have restaurants, shopping, arts, entertainment – it has to be clean and safe.

Foster says he has not been deterred by any of the opponents to downtown redevelopment. “I believe what we’re doing downtown is going to benefit everybody for a long time, including the people who are opposed to that,” he states. “I hope they realize that sooner rather than later and get on board with it.”

“It’s coming quicker than we realize,” Foster says of the year 2015. “It’s only eight years away, so I don’t know how much of that can be accomplished, but I think that’s the direction that we’re going.”

That direction could lead El Paso to relive its glory days when there used to be a thriving city center full of life and movement – days when El Paso used to be, as Foster calls it, the Showplace of the Southwest. “The center and the heartbeat of El Paso should be Downtown,” he says. “When you look at some of these old buildings and some of the architecture, it’s beautiful. It’s something that needs to be preserved.”