It’s a windy El Paso Friday night, but that doesn’t stop party goers from dancing under disco balls and fluorescent lights or sitting with friends for a bite to eat and some cocktails before heading down an alley to their next evening stop.
This is nightlife in El Paso’s Cincinnati Entertainment District – electric, lively and lately, under the eye of city planners.
City leaders want El Pasoans and visitors to have a good time and enjoy the nightlife, but for years noise, crime, traffic accidents and drunken driving arrests have plagued the most popular reveling spots. To balance a vibrant nightlife with safety and responsibility, they turned to a Sociable City Assessment Plan presented to the City Council in May 2024 as the guide to change how businesses and nearby residents can peacefully coexist.
The assessment reviewed the city’s entertainment districts with a focus on Downtown El Paso and the Cincinnati Avenue area, although it identified social clusters citywide. It includes recommendations to improve safety, mitigate excessive noise and noise compliance, create rideshare hubs, increase use of public parking garages, and improve communication among the community, business owners and the city government. The Responsible Hospitality Institute, a nonprofit based in California, was hired in 2023 for about $95,000 to conduct the assessment.
As part of the recommendations, the City Council on May 28 this year changed its vehicle and traffic ordinance to allow for rideshare zones in popular nightlife areas. This followed toughening its noise ordinance in December to help curb excessively loud music and other noise in entertainment districts.
The plan also recommends the city more strictly enforce parking rules, including the towing of illegally parked vehicles. It also asks the city to toughen local liquor license applications, including requiring applicants to submit business, security and sound mitigation plans for review by the city manager or City Council. The city has not taken formal actions on those recommendations.
But some business owners said they were not consulted in shaping the plan’s recommendations, particularly those affecting how they operate.
“There needs to be common ground,” said Jacob Jimenez, co-owner of Coconuts Bar & Grill in Five Points. “The city did not reach out for feedback.”
Marshall Berry, owner of Crawdaddy’s Bar & Grill in the Cincinnati Entertainment District, said the city’s communication with bar owners has been lacking.
“Even when changes are made we (businesses) are not usually made aware of them until code enforcement comes to give out tickets,” Berry said. “The decibel limit makes it impossible for places with patios to have any sort of entertainment, such as bands or DJ’s.”
Other bar owners, including those at Lost & Found and Lowbrow Palace, expressed similar frustrations when the city updated its noise ordinance in December.
Charlie Intebi, a member of the Kern Place Neighborhood Association, said the association has long advocated for the city to address safety and traffic and improvements aimed at helping to deter noise and safety concerns in the neighborhood near the Cincinnati Entertainment District.
“It’s unfair for those people that have lived there forever – then, all of a sudden, that’s an entertainment district. All of a sudden they can’t sleep because they have people in their yards doing all sorts of crazy stuff and being loud and all that stuff that happens,” Intebi said.
Charlie Preicado, who occasionally visits the Cincinnati Entertainment District, said he is not sure the changes will improve safety in the area. But, he said, anything to make El Paso more vibrant is a great idea.
“Unless you can educate people to behave a little bit better it’s (changes) not gonna work because (people) they’re used to doing whatever they want to do.”
Fred Evans, president of the Five Points Development Association, said the entertainment districts and issues like crime, loud noise from bars and poor traffic mitigation in the area are a result of poor planning by the city that has allowed for bars and other nightlife businesses to operate so close to residential neighborhoods. He said this has caused conflicts between residents wanting to live peacefully and businesses wanting to provide entertainment while generating income.
The Sociable City Assessment Plan, he said, is the city’s “Band-Aid” approach to fix the problems it created with the zoning.
“There’s a tremendous effort undertaken at untold expense to take care of the problems created by the emergence of all of these bar districts,” Evans said, adding that the association doesn’t want Five Points to be known as an entertainment district.
The city collects revenue from bars, restaurants and nightclubs, including sales and mixed beverage taxes, as well as from an array of permitting fees such as food establishment and liquor sales licenses. In 2024, the city collected about $4 million in mixed-beverage tax revenues from establishments citywide, according to the Texas Comptroller, and has collected about $1.6 million through May this year.
“The key is recognizing that our businesses have helped create this major piece of our economy, the night time economy (of restaurants, bars and entertainment venues), and as we continue to work to make sure that it grows, to make sure that the community is safe – that we’re doing this in a very responsible way,” El Paso Downtown Management District Executive Director Joe Gudenrath said.
Safety concerns around social districts
The Cincinnati Entertainment District – blocks of bars, restaurants and cafes near the University of Texas at El Paso – along with Downtown, Five Points in Central, Airway Boulevard and Zaragoza Road on the Eastside and Sunrise Plaza in Northeast were identified as popular nightlife clusters and have long had issues with high traffic, parking congestion and crime.
The sociable assessment reported that, between 2021 and 2023, there were 233 fatal traffic collisions, 33% of which were alcohol-related throughout the city, and there were 60 pedestrian fatalities with nearly half being alcohol-related.
The Cincinnati area generated 319 crimes against persons, including aggravated assaults, disorderly conduct and public intoxication from 2021 to 2023, according to the Sociable City Assessment. There were also about 2,000 citizen calls for service and about 1,800 police-officer-initiated calls for service within that time frame, the assessment found.
One of the plan’s action items called for coordinated police and code enforcement within the social districts. City codes include rules on building standards and inspections, operating permits, noise levels, fire safety, capacity limits and more.
Code Enforcement Director Steve Alvarado, in emailed responses to El Paso Matters, said improved nighttime enforcement is intended to be a coordinated, multi-agency effort. He said Code Enforcement has a team of officers deployed at night to respond to sound complaints and other safety concerns like overcrowding and parking violations.
He also said the officers often work in tandem with the El Paso Police Department and the Fire Marshal’s Office for safety inspections and ensure there isn’t overcrowding at venues.
The El Paso Police Department did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
“Additionally, regular collaboration with other departments – like Planning and Inspections, Health, and Environmental Services – will be necessary to address the full range of nighttime challenges identified in the plan,” Alvarado said via email responses.
Alvarado said another key partnership is with Fort Bliss.
The assessment found that almost half of all crimes against persons in social districts citywide occurred in the Cincinnati Entertainment District, but also found that between 2022 and 2023, about 28% of serious incidents in social districts involved military personnel.
“As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen community relationships and deter misconduct, we have implemented proactive measures to guide and monitor how soldiers interact in public areas throughout El Paso, including popular social districts such as Cincinnati Street, Five Points, Downtown, and the Northeast/Eastside corridors,” Fort Bliss Public Affairs Deputy Maj. Arturo “Art” Rodriguez, said in an emailed response to El Paso Matters.
The city meets quarterly with Fort Bliss, which has established courtesy patrols where senior officers monitor social venues on weekends to address potential issues before they escalate into incidents such as fights, public intoxication or drunk driving.
Rodriguez said part of the partnership includes educational briefings, peer mentorship, and joint messaging that emphasizes the importance of moderation and accountability.
Rideshare zones for apps like Lyft and Uber
The City Council’s change to the vehicle and traffic ordinance last month will allow for the creation of designated rideshare pickup and drop-off zones in the popular nightlife areas including the Cincinnati Entertainment District.
The first will be three spaces on Baltimore Drive first approved in September 2024 as a pilot program.
“These zones give structure to how rideshare services operate in key areas, especially around nightlife districts, and help reduce congestion and confusion during busy times,” Alvarado said, adding changing the ordinance was a foundational step.
The zones, designated areas where Uber, Lyft and other rideshare drivers can pick up and drop-off passengers, will also have safety awareness signs reminding riders to verify they are getting into the correct vehicle and to share their ride information with friends or family. The zone established on Baltimore Drive June 9 is also monitored by city and Texas Department of Public Safety cameras.
Intebi said anything that encourages patrons from parking and wandering in the neighborhood after hours is helpful.
Cincinnati area patrons did not think they were needed.
“I don’t think it’s going to benefit. I think the way it is right now is fine because we have the public transport (transportation such as buses and the streetcar),” said Leopoldo Pereyra, who frequents the area for its coffee shops and dining. “This area is very crowded as it is, so adding another layer of complexity is not going to be beneficial.”
Pereyra also said he has seen rideshare zones in larger cities, but does not think El Paso has a need for them.
The rideshare zones would not prohibit pickups or drop-offs in other areas of the Cincinnati Entertainment District, said city spokesperson Laura Cruz-Acosta.
“It also encourages the use of rideshare instead of driving when consuming alcohol, hopefully reducing instances of people driving under the influence,” city Rep. Chris Canales, whose district encompasses the Cincinnati Entertainment District, said.
Addressing noise in the social districts
One of the biggest complaints residents who live near the entertainment districts have is noise – both from the loudspeakers at venues and the people reveling in the streets. The city looked to its noise ordinance to help. The effort started in 2018, but stalled during the COVID-19 pandemic, then resumed in 2021 before being taken into consideration and changed under the Social City Assessment Plan last year.
The noise ordinance sets limits on noise levels in certain establishments, including decibel and vibration levels, how far the noise can reach and the times noise is restricted.
Under the changes, businesses that play music inside, but have roll-up style doors, open doors, and windows must abide by rules for “outdoor areas” or apply for an outdoor sound permit.
Previously, the city would notify anybody living within a 300-foot radius of a business that was applying for a sound permit and allow for written protests for those living within 150 feet of the applicant. Now, anyone living within 300 feet of an applicant can give a written protest and everyone within 500 feet will be notified.
The amendments were approved in December, though city Rep. Josh Acevedo voted against them because he felt the report was flawed.
“I think one of the issues with the sociable city thing (is the report) … it didn’t give us a lot of the answers that we needed,” Acevedo said. “They kind of went in circles telling us how there’s not one level of decibels and I kind of wanted a more clear answer.”
Acevedo said there should have been better communication with bar owners to participate and give feedback on the sound ordinance.
“These changes came after a lot of community and stakeholder input and are aimed at striking a better balance between vibrant nighttime activity and quality of life for nearby residents,” Alvarado said.
Time-of-day restrictions on the enforcement of exterior speaker use were also removed so that enforcement can be whenever a noise violation occurs rather than certain hours of the day or night.
The change also includes a civil penalty of up to $1,000 per day and clarified that violations can occur at any time of the day inside or outside if the noise “unreasonably disturbs or interferes with the sleep, peace, comfort, or repose of a person of reasonable sensibilities.”
Other recommendations from the assessment included hiring a night ambassador, or night time economy manager, referring to the network of social venues such as bars, restaurants, cafes and live music spaces to serve as a liaison between business owners, the city and residents to proactively address concerns, although the city has not yet created the role.
The post El Paso is trying to create a safer, cohesive social scene. Will tougher rules work? appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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