Games, tax-free weekend, film festival expected to draw tens of thousands Downtown
Downtown is the place to be this weekend with multiple events expected to attract thousands to the revitalized area.
More than 25,000 people are expected to attend the El Paso Chihuahuas games at Southwest University Park Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Thousands more are expected to attend the Plaza Classic Film Festival, which is running all weekend.
Shop owners downtown also tell ABC-7 they are expecting thousands this tax-free weekend. Then there’s the International 10k run, which criss-crosses Downtown El Paso, before crossing the border. It begins at 7 a.m. Saturday.
The El Paso Downtown Art and Farmers Market also takes place every Saturday morning from 9am-1pm.
Click here to see an interactive map of parking lots, spaces and garages in Downtown El Paso.
The center of all this activity is expected to be the newly-redesigned San Jacinto Plaza, which has changed the perception many had of the Downtown area.
Joe Gudenrath, executive director of the Downtown Management District, said Downtown is gaining more momentum every weekend.
“I would say the most recent major movement was with San Jacinto Plaza opening, the great cloud over Downtown is lifted,” Gudenrath said. “The plaza is beautiful, it’s inviting, it’s active, people are enjoying it. When you couple that with the special events, the attendance just continues to grow.”
Luis Guillen, an employee at La Malinche Cafe, said business has been booming recently. The restaurant is located across from the Plaza. “I started working here just six months ago and we recently hired two more employees,” Guillen said.
“It’s getting a lot better since they opened La Placita (San Jacinto),” Frances Luera, manager of the Coffee Box, said, adding they are considering staying open later in the evening. “We did add more people in the afternoon, because we see more of the traffic, so we added another person.”
Gudenrath said he can’t remember a busier weekend Downtown. “We’re talking in the hundreds of millions of dollars when you’re talking about public investment, private investment, and there’s still hundreds of millions of dollars to come,” he said.
