Now that the Beaver Hill Shopping Center has a new owner, neighbors like Jim Travers are hoping that the “dilapidated eyesore” will get a makeover. Hoping, and working to make sure.
Travers (pictured), a leader in the Beaver Hill Southwest Neighborhood Association, and other neighbors have been complaining for years about the state of the complex located at the corner of Blake and Fitch streets. He said the property’s former owner was so unresponsive to neighbors’ requests to address graffiti and trash problems at the strip mall that many locals had an agreement to not shop there.
Then last month, the shopping center was bought for $1.5 million by Sam’s Food Stores, a Rocky Hill-based company that operates convenience stores at over 150 locations.
Travers said he hopes that the new owner will be more responsive to the neighborhood’s concerns. He was disappointed and perplexed , he said, when a company representative told him that, apart from getting a new sign for the corner, Sam’s has no plans to improve the plaza.
Travers Asks
The Beaver Hill shopping plaza contains a Chinese restaurant, a DB convenience mart, a laundromat, a discount store, two hair salons, and a Carribean restaurant. Travers said that for ten years the center has been characterized by trash and graffiti. In general the strip mall looks like “a bunker” and an “eyesore,” cluttered with signs and poorly maintained, Travers said.
“I have brought in the health department on more than one occasion for overflowing trash” at the DB mart, said Elaine Braffman, neighborhood specialist for the Livable City Initiative. She said she has also sent in LCI workers to remove graffiti. It’s unusual for LCI to be so involved with a commercial property, Braffman said, “But if all else fails…”
Braffman said that she sent several letters to the property’s former owner. “There was never, ever a response.”
Travers said that the neighborhood repeatedly approached the owner, asking him to perform maintenance and deal with the graffiti issue.
Travers’ association took it upon itself to buy paint and organize volunteers to cover the graffiti. Eventually neighbors got so fed up that they threatened to picket in front of the owner’s house in Orange. Then they “made a pact not to patronize any of the businesses,” Travers said.
So it came as a pleasant surprise when Travers read in the Register‘s classifieds section that the Beaver Hill Shopping Center had changed hands, for a tidy sum. “I thought, ‘Wow! A million and a half in this real estate market!’” Travers said.
He did some research and traced the new ownership through the Diversified Investment Group, to CCO, LLC, and finally to Sam’s Food Stores, where he was put in touch with a representative named Arsalan Altaf.
Travers called up Altaf. He learned the company didn’t seem to have any plans for the plaza. After explaining the neighborhood’s problems with the property, Travers was told only that Sam’s plans to install a new sign at the corner.
“The issues with the property go well beyond the sign,” Travers told Altaf. He thought to himself, “This guy’s obviously not seen the property.”
Travers mentioned to Altaf the possibility of installing consistent signage at the plaza, to make it more unified and inviting, and was told that Sam’s had limited ability to control such things. Travers disputes this; he later argued that Sam’s could easily make signs a condition in their lease agreement with businesses at the plaza.
Finally, Altaf suggested that Travers compile a list of the neighborhood’s concerns and send it to Sam’s.
“Why does Sam’s Food Stores spend a million and a half dollars to buy a dilapidated shopping center and then have no idea what they’re going to do to fix it up?” Travers asked.
Sam’s Responds
“It’s a real estate investment, as I see it,” said Altaf, contacted by phone. Sam’s was interested in owning property occupied by the DB Mart since DB is one of the chains of convenience stores that Sam’s operates, he said.
Altaf said that he works with real estate and leasing for Sam’s. He said that the company has no changes planned for the plaza other than “continued success.”
“I’ve been down there several times,” Altaf said. “It seems like a great location.”
Asked about the presence of trash and graffiti, Altaf said, “I didn’t notice much.”
Altaf said that Sam’s has already replaced the roofs on both buildings and has plans to replace the sign on the corner (pictured). “We are making an effort. We’re definitely making an effort,” he said.
Asked about the possibility of requiring consistent size and location of signs at the plaza, Altaf again mentioned the replacement of the corner sign, referring to it as “a big investment on our part.”
Altaf said that he would be happy to come to neighborhood meetings but suggested that the manager of the DB Mart would be a better person to contact, since the manager will have day-to-day knowledge of the situation.
“The DB is only one aspect of the entire shopping center. Our concerns are wih the shopping center in general,” said Travers, contacted afterwards. “The DB manager does not have info on long-term plans for the plaza.”
Travers mentioned specifically that he’d like to see something done about the window glass on the Chinese restaurant, a scratched-up, unattractive plexiglass. In general, “We’d love to see facade work that makes [the plaza] more inviting.”
“We’ve had years of a landlord that didn’t do anything,” Travers said. “It seems to be a new owner with business as usual.”