Eastside of El Portal Center |
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| Location | Laredo, Texas, USA |
|---|---|
| Opening date | 1977 |
| Closing date | 2003 |
| Developer | Morgan Stern Realty |
| Owner | Morgan Stern Realty |
| No. of stores and services | 80+ |
| No. of anchor tenants | 2 |
| Total retail floor area | 385,000+ sq. ft. |
| No. of floors | 1-2 |
El Portal Center formally River Drive Mall was a regional 385,000-square-foot (35,800 m2) indoor mall located in the north Rio Grande bank in downtown Laredo, Texas[1]. The mall was constructed in 1977. The River Drive Mall was succeeded by Mall Del Norte in the late 1980s as the main mall in the city. It has been closed since 2003 when Morgan Stern Realty bought the property, renamed it El Portal Center and started renovating it until 2005. It has been planned for Morgan Stern Realty to turn El Portal Center into an indoor outlet mall[2]. Their main emphasis would be outlets stores, restaurants, and entertainment. In 2006, a spokesman for Morgan Stern Realty stated, "Our progress has been impeded primarily on the barrage of negative, national news coverage of Laredo that has depicted the violence in Nuevo Laredo as spilling over to Laredo, while unfair and inaccurate, has nonetheless caused a delay in our factory outlet leasing program."[3] As of June 2011 the mall is still closed.