A former Kmart store on Cleveland’s West Side that closed last year has become home to empty beer and liquor bottles, piles of rain-soaked cardboard and plastic buckets used as personal toilets. Members of nearby Veterans of Foreign Wars Post #2533, whose property is adjacent to the former big-box store, said the homeless encampment has created health and safety concerns that, so far, have fallen on deaf ears.
The former Kmart near the corner of Lorain Avenue and W 150th Street has stood vacant since the retailer closed and liquidated the store in late 2017. Ever since then, the property doesn’t appear to have been tended to as large piles of building debris, tires, chopped up tree limbs, liquor bottles and other piles of trash line the back of the property that was once used to receive shipments. In the landscaping flanking the southern properly line, large shrubs and holly trees have become overgrown, largely shrouding the homeless encampment inside.
A small, ivy-covered chain fence separates the encampment from VFW Post #2533.
“We’re stuck. No one wants to answer the issue,” said Paul Weaver, a Marine veteran of the Vietnam era. “Last year, we had kids that were 6 or 7 years old that were underneath the bushes, laying [sic] underneath the cardboard.”
Members’ calls to child services were successful. However, their calls to police over the past several months have only resulted in the homeless individuals coming back to the encampment a few hours after officers leave, Weaver said.
Not only is the homeless encampment unsanitary and unsightly, but Weaver and other members of the VFW post are also worried about their safety.
“It being a VFW, a lot of our members are older and in their 70s and 80s even,” Weaver said. “They bring their wives up here and they get scared when they see these people near the parking lot. Then we also have our [bartenders]. They come out to empty the trash at the end of their shift and they also go out to their car. They just don’t like to see the people around because they just don’t know who they are or what they could do.
While there have not been any incidents involving patrons or post staff, Weaver said there’s always the constant worry of what could happen.
“That's the thing. It’s an unknown factor really,” Weaver said. “A lot of these people could be vets and we embrace the veterans, but we don’t know them. Veterans are like the rest of the world. There are good vets and some very bad vets out there. We want to keep everybody safe out there. That's our goal.”
According to property records, the former Kmart shopping center is owned by Cleveland OH Center LLC, a foreign limited liability company that traces back to a real estate developer, TLM Realty Corp., in New York City. Weaver and other VFW members said calls to TLM Realty resulted in a constant run-around. Property records do not show whether Kmart is still leasing the building. News 5’s calls to both Kmart and TLM were not returned.
“We called Kmart and they told us it was the property owner’s responsibility. We called the property owner and they told us it was Kmart’s responsibility since they leased the property,” Weaver said. “It’s very frustrating. It’s an issue that somebody has to address. Somebody has to stand up and say, ‘yeah, we’ll take care of it. We’ll clean up the area.’”
