If at first you don't succeed, stall and stall again

The Seedy Council discusses the Plaza Theater again

After waiting 10 years to do anything about the old Plaza Theater, the Laredo city council started to show signs of stalling even more. Councilman San Miguel in particular started throwing all sorts of ifs and buts around but the initiative to continue with the historic theaters restoration largely survived intact. 

Of course, there will the usual 30-day period which the city will use to inspect and contemplate repairs before deciding whether to lease it out to local businessmen Danny Lopez Jr. and Arturo Trevino Jr. who are behind the Plaza project.

Council woman Cindy Liendo-Espinosa displayed some frustration with attempts to delay the project any further and essentially invoked the "McAllen is eating our lunch" defense. In an obvious attempt to circumvent San Miguel's perceived stall tactics, Espinosa exclaimed  "This is why people say that we lose business to McAllen and San Antonio, because we don’t offer incentives to businessmen who want to make investments in our community,” she said. “It frustrates me to hear that we don’t want to take those chances'.

District 1 councilman Mike Garza, on the other hand, was more positive and sought to ease some of the tensions on the usually, back-slapping council. For his part, Garza chimed in “What I’m excited about is somebody’s doing something about it,” said Councilman Mike Garza of the long-vacant city property. “We’re at least trying to do something.”  The question is whether this time around Garza's "trying to do something' will provide any results. After all, the city bought the Plaza from United Artists way back in the 20th century; 1999 to be precise.