selling individual lots to people<\/a> from all over the world.<\/p>\nAt the time, Horizon City was not incorporated and had about 650 homes and a population of about 1,800. But it had an 18-hole golf course surrounded by picturesque desert and plenty of undeveloped land. Aggressive salesmen used a variety of maneuvers to lock in contracts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve heard stories from the old timers about meeting prospective buyers at the airport, and they would have curtains on the car windows so they didn\u2019t see El Paso,\u201d Miller said, surmising that the salespeople were leery of turning off buyers with scenes of dusty El Paso. \u201cAnd they would ply them with refreshment all the way to the golf course. They needed to see that green golf course first.\u201d<\/p>\n
Horizon Corporation, which was also selling property in New Mexico and Arizona, helped build much of early Horizon City, investing about $30 million in construction and public facilities.<\/p>\n
But its sales practices drew scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, which determined the company used false and misleading advertising. The FTC ordered Horizon Corp. to create a $14.5 million fund to repay 40,000 consumers who bought land that the commission deemed to have no resale value.<\/p>\n
The company closed in 1984, but not after selling thousands of lots around Horizon City, leaving behind stalled development and a patchwork of parcels that has contributed to the growing problem of unregulated colonias.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was a scam from the word go,\u201d Miller said. \u201cThey sold these under the full knowledge that they would probably never have service. And people would buy them thinking they\u2019re going to get service, and they never did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even after Horizon Corp.\u2019s closure, other developers continued selling land without water, sewer or paved roads \u2013 a practice that was still legal at the time.<\/p>\n
![\"Horizon](\"data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAADCAQAAAAe\/WZNAAAAEElEQVR42mM8U88ABowYDABAxQPltt5zqAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==\")
<\/p>\n
An image from Google Maps shows some of the undeveloped lots east of Horizon City.<\/p>\n
County steps in<\/p>\n
Erich Morales, an assistant county attorney and the division chief of El Paso County\u2019s public works and projects division, has spent most of his career trying to solve the infrastructure problems in unincorporated areas.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey hired me to start figuring out what to do about the colonias,\u201d he said, referring to county neighborhoods that lack basic utilities.<\/p>\n
When Morales began in 1987, the solution seemed straightforward: If the problem was land developers not installing utilities before selling land, then the solution would be a clearly mandated set of policies requiring exactly that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought, initially, we\u2019re going to pass some laws. We\u2019re going to adopt some regulations. We\u2019re going to stop some of these developers, and we\u2019ll have this thing cleaned up in a year or two. I had the blessed ignorance of the youth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
His first tour of neighborhoods outside El Paso\u2019s city limits brought him the sobering reality of colonia life. Dilapidated homes without stable electricity and \u201cno water, no sewer, no roads,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw this stuff, and I didn\u2019t sleep for about three nights,\u201d Morales said. \u201cI thought, \u2018Oh my God, how are we going to address how widespread this problem is?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ruben R. Ramirez<\/p>\n
Most of the lots were purchased by people who either tried to find inexpensive water, sewage and electricity connections or held on to the land, hoping development would eventually reach them. Others abandoned their properties.<\/p>\n
State laws enacted in the 1990s now require developers to install utilities before selling properties, which has allowed some expansion of modern neighborhoods and businesses in eastern El Paso County. But about 91,000 plots of undeveloped or unattended land are blocking further modern expansion.<\/p>\n
With the government and land developers now largely on the same page about providing infrastructure to new subdivisions, a critical hurdle remains \u2013 contacting owners of the vacant or neglected plots of land.<\/p>\n
\u2018Fractional\u2019 lot ownership<\/p>\n
In the decades since Horizon Corporation closed, many unserviced and neglected properties have been passed down through generations. The deeds have become increasingly divided as landowners have died, leaving properties shared among their children and grandchildren. Divorces and other legal complications have further clouded land ownership.<\/p>\n
\u201cA plot might have 16 owners. It\u2019s really crazy. Altogether, there could be hundreds of thousands of owners,\u201d said Michael McElroy, director of planning and development for El Paso County.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople from all over the country, and in fact, all over the world, purchased land. In the decades since, that ownership has just expanded. So a lot might be owned by someone in El Paso, and the lot next door might have ownership in Switzerland. It really is that diverse,\u201d McElroy said, describing it by the industry term of \u201cfractional ownership.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because of these deed ownership questions and lack of basic public services, many of these plots have very low tax assessments \u2013 sometimes as low as a few hundred dollars. Many owners have lost contact with the tax office because it costs more for the office to mail them a bill than the amount of taxes due, McElroy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just don\u2019t send that notice, so people might not even know they own the land because they\u2019re so far removed from the person who originally purchased it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ruben R. Ramirez<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the fix?<\/p>\n
One potential solution is a 2021 Texas law that allows El Paso County Commissioners Court to declare a property abandoned if the owners cannot be located.<\/p>\n
H.B. 1564, known as the \u201cfractionalized lots bill,\u201d is a legal way for these abandoned lots to be transferred to a trustee who oversees the redevelopment of the land and brings it back to the market.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think the solution is to vacate many of these lots, erase the subdivision lines that were put in in the \u201950s, \u201960s and \u201970s, return them to effectively raw land, and then come up with a plan that would ideally require the land to be developed in a way that has more modern amenities to it,\u201d Morales said.<\/p>\n
This would only be an option for land that has been abandoned for 25 years, and a percentage of the money from the sale would go to the landowners, based on the percentage of land they owned.<\/p>\n
If no landowner can be located, the funds would go into a registry of the court and would be \u201cheld until we can find somebody who can lawfully claim it,\u201d Morales said.<\/p>\n
The initial implementation of the law in El Paso will be a partnership with the Horizon Communities Improvement Association for a parcel of land north of the Eastlake Mission Ridge area near Horizon City.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is going to be our first attempt to see how this legislation is going to work, and to see if it really does help us address this issue of fractionalized lots so that these areas can be developed properly,\u201d said El Paso County Commissioner Iliana Holguin, whose district includes many of the problematic lots.<\/p>\n
If successful, the effort could mean a new surge of development and the creation of a hub of commerce in Far East El Paso, said Eduardo Garcia, executive director of the Horizon City Economic Development Corporation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Eduardo Garcia<\/p>\n
Ruben R. Ramirez<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would help out economically for this entire area,\u201d he said. \u201cWe do have a lot of retail already, but we do need more in this area so that people who live around here don\u2019t have to travel all the way to Central El Paso.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miller said he envisions a fully developed Horizon region as another downtown<\/a>, capturing the flow of growing traffic that is already circulating and expected to increase. With the progress being made within the city limits of Horizon City, he said the addition of new communities in nearby El Paso County land would establish this region as a major economic corridor.<\/p>\n\u201cWe don\u2019t need to go to Downtown (El Paso),\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re creating our own downtown.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Driving his truck along a stretch of eastern El Paso County just outside the Horizon City limits, Walter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[90696,138,1060,140,139,1058,90697,90698],"class_list":["post-235007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-abandoned-land","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-county","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-horizon-city","tag-land-reclamation","tag-property-ownership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}