Troubled area ‘hurts us as a business’
Owners unite in calls for change
Those who work along the city’s troubled “Methadone Mile” said they are fed up with the growing level of crime in the area and are calling on city officials to make a change.
“You see fighting, you see people shooting up, you see prostitution, you see everything,” said Roselle Virula, manager of the Golden Nozzle Car Wash in the South End. “It looks ugly, and to have this going on affects us a lot. It hurts us as a business.”
Virula has been working at the car wash — formerly known as Bubbles Car Wash — for 10 years and said drug users and panhandlers loiter on the property every day and scare away many of her customers. The car wash has also been broken into twice in the past few years, she said.
“I feel unsafe every day,” Virula said. “I’m always at risk.”
Concerns about life along the Methadone Mile — which encompasses the area of Massachusetts Avenue, Melnea Cass Boulevard and Southampton Street — was reignited last week after a Suffolk County corrections officer was beaten by a group of men as he was arriving to work.
“I was shocked that they took it to that extent, to the level where they dragged him and beat him. I saw the video on the news. And it was really sad, it never should have happened,” Virula said.
Those who work in the area told the Herald Thursday they have noticed an added police presence and that the drug paraphernalia and excrement on the streets had been cleaned up considerably. However, they said that they believe things will return to normal as soon as media coverage of the area dies down.
“It’s never this clean. It’s not going to stay this way,” said Paula Martin, a project manager for DiPierro Construction on Massachusetts Avenue.
While local business owners have been united in their calls for change, they differ on what kind of change they want.
Gerry DiPierro, owner of DiPierro Construction, said the city needs to reopen the Long Island Bridge, adding its closure is what caused all the homeless people and drug addicts to congregate in the South End instead on the island’s shelters.
“People are breaking into cars, shooting up, pooping on the street,” he said. “They need to open the causeway back up.”
Virula said she wasn’t sure where the people should relocate to, she just wants the city to move them somewhere else.
“Personally, I think they need to get rid of the methadone clinic and the homeless shelter and move it elsewhere,” she said. “That needs to be done, if you ask me.”