By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Updated: 11:08p.m.Sunday,April1,2012

Published: 8:49p.m.Sunday,April1,2012

EL PASO The Rock Kiss bar, with its neon pink walls, stands a few steps from the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine, the state's newest medical school. Although a sign advertises happy hour, the bar is shuttered, having been acquired by the growing school to make way for a parking lot, trees and shrubs.

Across the street, a children's hospital opened earlier this year, as did an adjacent women's hospital within a recently renovated county hospital.

Thus, in ways large and small, a sizable medical complex is emerging in El Paso, a high-desert city of 649,000 people along the border with Mexico and New Mexico.

Political, business and nonprofit leaders reached a consensus more than 10 years ago that educating medical students, treating patients and exploring biotechnology are essential to the future well-being of this area's people and economy. Several hundred million dollars from local tax proceeds, legislative appropriations and philanthropic donations have flowed into the effort.

Probably the singular thing here was to have a very consistent message that this is the most important thing to us," said Woody Hunt, a businessman and philanthropist who helped organize a 1998 economic summit that focused attention on the health care field following the collapse of the garment industry, which had been an economic mainstay.

Hunt added, "You've got to have vision. You've got to be organized. You've got to be patient."

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