There is a strip of stores next to a dirt lot on the Bonita Avenue side under a different owner. The people who own it, for whatever reason, they can't find a buyer. The empty shopping center is a magnet for blight, merchants and city officials said. Graffiti is scrawled along the back of the boarded up hardware store. People break in looking for a place to sleep.
Kids sneak in and skateboard.
Trash is dumped in the back, garbage containers overflow and potholes mark the parking lot. It's frustrating to a lot of residents and the City Council that we have this eyesore, eight acres of eyesore in the city. One reason it has been hard to fill the center, sold a handful of times in a decade, is that the owners don't seem to be trying to fill it, merchants and officials said. That's what it looks like to the community. Councilman Denis Bertone said the city should play a large role in revitalizing the center, which falls in a redevelopment area.