Downtown’s Creative Class
by Rene Leon • photos by Perla Parra

Their work is seen on television screens, the radio and in newspapers and magazines. Their clients are large companies, small shops and everything in between. They are the advertising agencies of Downtown El Paso.

Sanders\Wingo, Two Ton Creativity and Geronimo Design all are located in the Downtown area, and together they employ over 50 people.

Sanders \ Wingo
Sanders\Wingo is the largest of the three firms with a staff of 35 people in El Paso. Occupying the entire ninth floor of the Wells Fargo building, they moved downtown over two years ago from their previous location on Rio Bravo in Executive Center.

“We’re trying to repurpose our city and make our city a stronger brand. The focus of that is really centered downtown,” says S\W President and CEO Robert “Bob” Wingo. “We’ve been down here now almost two years. We just feel it’s very important if you’re going to talk about revitalizing the market to be part of it and you should be some place where you’re living it.”

Wingo also feels moving to the city’s center has reinvigorated his employees, which has led to a successful business. “Happy people have an opportunity to be much more productive,” he states. “The lifeblood of any agency is people, and providing the kind of work environment that will make people happy and want to come to work; if you can do that, you have a chance of succeeding. In retrospect, I wish I would have done it sooner.”

The agency’s Austin office, which has a staff of 30, is located just two blocks away from the vivid scene of 6th Street. And while Austin’s downtown may seem busier, Wingo feels El Paso has a chance to develop its own Downtown as an entertainment destination, especially since he has seen Austin become what it is today just in the last seven years since S\W has been there.

With one of his favorite things about working Downtown being the ability to look from his ninth-floor office and see the mountains and both East and West El Paso, Wingo also feels being Downtown gives his firm the benefit of being able to keep in contact with clients. “We have the ability the interact with clients and walk to lunch and talk to people, and being close to what’s going on in the heart of the city is just very advantageous for us.”

And, S\W clients from outside El Paso are taking notice, both of the new S\W offices and Downtown El Paso.

“The people that I’ve had come in [from out of town] have been pleasantly surprised with our office environment. I think, obviously, Downtown’s got a ways to go before we can start attracting people to come down here and hang out down here, but I see great promise in where the city’s headed.”

Two Ton Creativity
A few blocks down is Two Ton Creativity, a shop opened by Morris Pittle when he returned to El Paso after ten years working in ad markets around the country. The Two Ton offices are housed on the second floor of a newly renovated building at the corner of Franklin and Oregon.

Working under a domed, tin stamp ceiling is a staff of eight who have ample opportunity to be entertained and inspired with the office’s resources of a foosball table, billiards table, drum set, big screen TV and a full bar.

The office also has a fully functional audio studio, which is where local performers Radio La Chusma recorded their latest offerings.

From Pittle’s corner office you can see students, commuters and vendors on the street, and that often inspires some of Two Ton’s work. “I want to take the agency and start doing more cultural marketing-type of stuff,” he says, adding that one thing he likes about being an ad man in El Paso is the opportunity to work in a unique cultural community.

“I think we’re all Mexicans here,” states Pittle, adding that while in Austin, he, a self-titled “Jewish guy from the Westside,” was often told by people that he had a Spanish accent.

The multi-cultural community is El Paso’s greatest resource, Pittle feels. And it is what El Paso needs to embrace in order to position our city on the national and international stage.

“Culture is hip, culture is style,” he says. “And El Paso should be the authority for anything border-related.”

It is that exposure to different cultures and backgrounds that Pittle feels makes locating his agency in amidst the “cool buildings” of Downtown worth any downsides, such as constantly running down to feed the parking meter, or that one time when an unsavory-looking man popped into the office during a late-night work session.
“That was a little strange,” Pittle says, then jokingly adding, “But I don’t care. I’m 270-pounds and have a bad attitude.”

Geronimo Design
Just over one mile away but still in the vicinity of Downtown is Geronimo Design. Located on Texas Avenue, it is the newest addition to the area’s creative class.

Founded by Geronimo Garcia and run with the help of his wife Sandra and a staff of three, Geronimo Design originally started as a print shop 15 years ago. But as clients began to ask for more services, Garcia had no choice but to expand into what is now a full-service agency.

Geronimo Garcia initially moved Downtown because he wanted to find affordable real estate, and “here was one of the places where I could find something.”

He admits that he is proud to have moved to the area, as he is anxious to see some improvements made to Downtown and Texas Avenue. “I think there’s a thinking of taking pride in El Paso. I think we need to invest in El Paso. I’m here as an El Pasoan, and I feel that it’s a calling, something I should do.

Garcia had his eye on the current Geronimo Design building since he took his pets to the 24-hour animal hospital that previously occupied the space. “It’s one of the few Art Deco Southwest style buildings in El Paso, and I always thought ‘what a cool building,’ so one day I’m driving by and I see they moved out, and so I called and here I am.”

Setting the Geronimo Design offices apart from the other downtown ad firms is not vividly designed interiors and unique architecture, but the courtyard outside, which even has a full-size house in the middle of it. “To me that courtyard is really the gem of the whole place because it will give us a way to connect the outdoors to what we do,” Garcia says.

The Garcias, though, feel the building itself is not what lends creativity to their employees. “They’re very excited. I guess we needed that move,” Sandra Garcia says of vacating their Eastside office off of Lee Trevino. In fact, Geronimo Garcia says he never imagined his agency would be Downtown, especially after having spent over a decade as the only advertising firm on the Eastside.

“I can already tell, just being here a week, that it’s going to be great.”