Southwest University Park

Southwest University Park is a baseball stadium in El Paso, Texas. Primarily used for Minor League Baseball, it is the home of the El Paso Chihuahuas of the Pacific Coast League. Opened in 2014, the facility has an official capacity of 9,500, with 7,500 fixed seats with the rest being berm and party deck standing room sections.

The name Southwest University is applied as a corporate sponsor, and not as the home stadium of Southwest University at El Paso (which has no intercollegiate athletics program; the university is a for-profit virtual college). Southwest University Park was named as the best new ballpark in 2014 by Ballpark Digest. The elevation of the playing field is approximately 3,750 feet (1,140 m) above sea level.

History

The complex is situated upon the site of El Paso's former City Hall, which was demolished by implosion on April 14, 2013, to make way for the stadium. Former El Paso Mayor Ray Salazar had filed a 2013 lawsuit to stop the demolition of the old City Hall, alleging the misuse of public funds by city officials, but the lawsuit was dismissed in court.

Ground for the ballpark was broken on May 30, 2013, with 300 people attending the event, including members of MountainStar Sports Group, the ownership group of the El Paso Pacific Coast League team, Pat O'Conner, president and CEO of Minor League Baseball, and City Representatives Ann Morgan Lilly, Susie Byrd, Cortney Niland, and Steve Ortega.

On March 5, 2014, it was announced that the team had signed a 20-year naming rights deal for the ballpark with Southwest University, an El Paso based business and technical school known until 2012 as Southwest Career College. (Southwest University is not the same institution as the University of the Southwest located in Hobbs, New Mexico.