For years, the owner of the Three Legged Monkey, a restaurant/bar, has claimed the city of El Paso has been using complaints from people in the Cielo Vista neighborhood to bully him into shutting down his business.

Mike Armstrong's latest claim is that the city will use $3 million of taxpayers' money to buy the Hawkins Plaza land, where the Three Legged Monkey subleases, even though the terms of the lease would give ownership of Hawkins Plaza back to the city eventually. In a nutshell, Armstrong claims the city will spend big money to buy land it already owns in order to kick the Monkey out of the plaza.

That claim was denied by city officials in a news conference Monday.

According to Joyce Wilson, city manager, the city will pay $2.9 million for the lease on Hawkins Plaza. With the purchase, they'll take over the plaza and collect rent from the businesses that stay.

Wilson said the money to buy the property comes out of the Airport Enterprise Fund, which is made up of profits from the airport and the 200 businesses on airport land.

That money will be paid back through sub-tenant rent money in the next nine years.

The city emphasizes that borrowing the money from the airport fund will not take away from any other projects.

"It (Airport Enterprise Fund) is only used to make improvements to support the operations of the airport for their capital projects, and for any of the land holdings that the airport owns, where they own the improvements," Wilson said. "There's no money that's going to be made up by taxpayer dollars."

Armstrong said he does not plan to take his business out of El Paso.

"I think the city's at a crucial point and time where people need to go ahead and realize that the corruption is alive and well, and people need to wake up and take a stand," Armstrong said. "I'm not running from anything."

As part of the settlement between the city and Patriot Place, who owns Hawkins Plaza, the Three Legged Monkey will have to vacate Hawkins Plaza before the city will reach its settlement.

Patriot Place filed bankruptcy after the city notified it of intentions to terminate two of its ground leases. One of those leases was with Hawkins Plaza.

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