El Portal Center formally River Drive Mall was a regional 385000 square feet (35,767.7 m²) indoor mall located in the north Rio Grande bank in downtown

Downtown Laredo

Downtown Laredo is the second main business district in Laredo, Texas. Downtown Laredo is the starting point for Interstate Highway 35 and State Highway 359. It is home to all of Laredo's high-rise buildings. Laredo's and Webb County's main government buildings are located in Downtown Laredo...

 Laredo, Texas

Laredo, Texas

Laredo is the county seat of Webb County, Texas, United States, located on the north bank of the Rio Grande in South Texas, across from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. According to the 2010 census, the city population was 236,091 making it the 3rd largest on the United States-Mexican border,...

. The mall was constructed in 1977. The River Drive Mall was succeeded by Mall Del Norte

Mall del Norte

Mall del Norte is a super regional shopping mall in Laredo, Texas. The mall opened in 1977 and has since been renovated in 1991, 1993 , and 2007. It is located along Interstate 35 in the city's rapidly growing retail hub of town...

 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. 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." As of June 2011 the mall is still closed.