Dec. 04–The 42-room, upscale Stanton House boutique hotel has opened in Downtown El Paso.

It's the third new hotel to open Downtown this year.

Construction of the hotel at 209 N. Stanton St., began in 2015. A hotel official had projected it would open in July when news media members were given a sneak-peak tour of the hotel in early June while it was still under construction.

Aaron Rodriguez, Stanton House general manager, said Monday that he couldn't talk about the hotel until it has its official opening next week. Its so-called soft opening was last week.

The hotel's luxurious rooms range from 330 square feet to 700 square feet. It also has four suites built on the front portion of the hotel's large, rooftop patio. Room rates start at $300 per night, according to the hotel website.

The hotel is in the renovated, 100-year-old, four-story, former Rogers Furniture store building — directly across the street from the Marriott Aloft Hotel, which opened May 24 in the renovated, historic Bassett Tower.

The other Downtown hotel to open this year is the 151-room Courtyard by Marriott Hotel, which was built from the ground up at Interstate 10 and Santa Fe Street, across from Southwest University Park, the El Paso Chihuahuas minor-league baseball stadium.

Stanton House is not part of a national hotel franchise.

It's squeezed between the Martin Lofts apartments, which opened in 2016, and the vacant, former Newberry department store building recently purchased in a bankruptcy auction for $1.03 million by a company operated by Miguel Fernandez.

Fernandez heads a group that owns Stanton House. He's chief executive officer and co-founder of Transtelco, an El Paso-based telecommunications company operating in the United States and Mexico.

Fernandez has not yet said what he plans to do with the Newberry building, one of nine Downtown buildings sold in a Nov. 6 auction as part of William "Billy" Abraham's two bankruptcy cases. Abraham for years owned a large portfolio of mostly dilapidated Downtown buildings.

Construction of the hotel took longer than expected, general manager Rodriguez explained in June, because one floor of the Rogers building had to be removed, and 70 tons of steel brought in to make a giant atrium-like structure that rises over the hotel's Taft-Diaz restaurant. It's named in honor of the historic 1909 meeting between U.S. President William Taft and Mexico President Porfirio Diaz in El Paso.

The restaurant's soft opening is planned for this week. It's operated by Oscar Herrera, head chef at Flor de Nogal Hacienda events center and restaurant in Ju?rez.

Vic Kolenc may be reached at 546-6421; [email protected]; @vickolenc on Twitter.