City sees corridor as part of downtown revitalization plan
By
Ray Gomez
Story Created:
Aug 19, 2009
Story Updated:
Aug 20, 2009
According to City officials, the corridor will serve as an opportunity to attract more business to downtown.
Our Noraida Negron shows us where this corridor leads to and how that site works in to downtown Laredo’s future.
Raul Salinas, Laredo Mayor:
"It’s going to open the opportunity to open up more stores to revitalize downtown. That’s the whole purpose of it."
The Santa Ursula corridor will bring hope to the downtown area say City officials who hope to use it to attract more businesses and even shoppers.
Carlos Villarreal, City Manager:
"We want to do improvements to the river bank area for some park facilities and do other things related to the River Vega Project."
But where does this corridor lead shoppers?
Underneath bridge number one and also to El Portal also known as River Drive Mall.
"This is El Portal and it has been closed many years and has been abandoned as well. According to the City, they have a company that bought this building to bring an outlet mall."
Cindy Liendo, City Council Woman:
"We are just waiting for them to move forward with their project to open El Portal shopping outlets. We are hoping this could be a push that we are working to improve downtown."
The City hopes with this push this empty and dusty mall could become a high end outlet mall for everyone to enjoy and is in talks with the company.
" We are waiting for some negotiations going on with the City because they want us to put a parking garage."
Meanwhile the Convention and Visitors Bureau says they will use the corridor to their advantage and they hope El Portal can be revitalized with new stores.
Blasita Lopez, Convention & Visitors Bureau:
"Right now we have a lot of stores downtown and the outlet mall, and this will just augment that to revitalize downtown."
The City of Laredo is now waiting for the company who bought River Drive Mall to finalize the project.
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