Business owners say illegal dumping making busy shopping center parking lot look like ‘junkyard’
A local business owner said someone used a U-Haul trailer to dump garbage in the middle of the busy shopping plaza.
Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Ashli Lincoln was along Fairburn Road in Douglasville Monday, where property management reached out to Channel 2 Action News for help.
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Business owners said that daily, people pull up and drop things off like furniture, trash and debris in the middle of the parking lot.
Business owners said the blight and odor from the trash has been a detriment to business.
“So many customers complain about that,” Des Patel said. “They come in and it feels something like a junkyard. We hear complaints about night customers that they do not feel safe to come here.”
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Lincoln found that that one section of the parking lot is owned by a private entity in California.
Rachael Davis helps manage the shopping plaza. She said they’ve made multiple complaints to the City of Douglasville.
“It’s hard for businesses to have business with all this mess going on out here,” Davis said. “Just when we were here earlier today, we’ve seen three people come up here and dump stuff out of their cars”
Call phone video taken over the weekend showed a person unloading items off a U-Haul truck.
“More trash is cluttering the parking lot, and it’s affecting the businesses,” Davis said. “It’s affecting the parking lot, the community and it just doesn’t look good.”
Property Management said they’re considering spending $400 a week to keep the area clean.
The City of Douglassville issued the following statement:
“The City has worked with this property owner to remove the dumped items. In addition to our Environmental Court proceedings, the city has additional authorities for illegal dumping should the removal not occur within a designated set of days. The city is actively moving to take on those next steps.
The property owner has exceeded their designated timeline for the original request to remove the items. They have now been notified that the City will be stepping in to remove the items at the cost of the property owner. "
