All that remains is an insurance agent, a print shop and a free-standing burger stand that does brisk lunchtime business. 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.