Several fast-food outlets, a car wash, and convenience store are to be part of a redeveloped at a prime corner of real estate at Interstate 10 and Lee Trevino Drive in East El Paso.
The 12.5-acre site once housed the long-closed Trevino Outlet Mall, and more recently a Rudolph Mazda dealership location, Mad Man Furniture and Hotel and Furniture Liquidators stores.
The life of the mall, opened in 1982, was extinguished years ago when its main tenant, a Burlington store, formerly known as the Burlington Coat Factory, moved to a former Walmart location at Yarbrough Drive and I-10.
The buildings at the site are currently being demolished to make way for Trevino Place, a retail center with seven pad sites where fast-food outlets and other national chain businesses will locate, said Patrick Gordon, president of Vista Star, an El Paso family-operated real estate development company.
Mister Car Wash first to sign lease
Mister Car Wash is the first tenant to sign a lease. It has a location about two miles away at Lee Trevino and Vista Del Sol Drive drives.
Names of five other potential tenants can’t be announced because they have yet to sign leases, Gordon said. One pad site does not yet have a potential tenant.
Previous redevelopment plans were to do a traditional strip shopping center, but after the COVID-19 pandemic the demand has been for single, retail pad sites, Gordon said.
“We have more tenant demand than pads available,” he said.
The high traffic counts at the corner make it a good location.
Great Recession, COVID derail earlier plans
Vista Star acquired the main mall building more than 20 years ago and the old Mazda dealership building around 2008.
The site became an eyesore as various redevelopment plans got stalled by the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2022, Gordon said.
Part of the development includes a small building, acquired by Vista Star in January, with four retail storefronts located at Rojas and Lee Trevino drives. That will remain with a new façade to match the exteriors of the other buildings in Trevino Place, Gordon said.
Redwing Boots, The Vapory, and Amax Auto Insurance are tenants in the building. One space is vacant.
Also on the site is the about 30,000 square-foot GC Services call center on an additional six acres, which likely will be redeveloped in the future, Gordon said. GC Services will remain for now because it has a lease, he said. That building also was part of the former outlet mall.
2026 target for Trevino Place completion
Demolition of the buildings should be done by June 2025, and the new buildings completed by late 2025 or early 2026, Gordon said.
Most of the tenants are expected to have ground leases and construct their own buildings. The Mister Car Wash and some other businesses may open in 2025.
This is Vista Star’s largest retail development. It has done single pad sites and some small strip centers, Gordon said. It plans to develop a two-building strip center in Anthony, Texas.
Vista Star development is family affair
Vista Star has mostly been involved in development of industrial buildings. The eight-building Eastpointe Industrial Business Park at 8330 Burnham Drive in East El Paso is one of its largest industrial developments. It also developed the Mesa Executive Park, a nine-building office park on Mesa Street near Executive Center in West El Paso, completed several years ago. Vista Star's office is located in the complex.
Gordon, 36, returned to El Paso to work for his family’s business in 2010 after getting degrees in real estate and finance at the University of Denver. He became company president in 2016.
The company has seen a lot of growth in the last several years, Gordon said.
The company, which adopted the Vista Star name in 2014, was started as a real estate investment firm in the 1980s by Patrick Gordon’s father, El Paso lawyer Pat Gordon; his mother, Laura Gordon, a former deputy city attorney; and his grandfather, the late Thomas Prendergast.
“We are a bread and butter company, not really flashy,” Laura Gordon said.
Vic Kolenc may be reached at 915-546-6421; vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; @vickolenc on Twitter, now known as X.
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