Narrative Descriptions for Photos Taken by Kent Paul Dolan as a Volunteer Participant in a City of Clovis, California Project, Undertaken in Pursuit of a "Fix" for Shaw Avenue, Which is Perceived as Suffering from Blight and Decay.

• Photo number 01: Westbound Shaw Avenue, showing the bus stop just to the west of Minniwawa.
  • This picture is an example of one good idea, a well-appointed bus stop, marred by multiple sources and instances of blight.
  • This is a good bus stop shelter, with the usual canopy, bench, and trash receptacle. Like almost all Greater Fresno bus shelters, however, it lacks adequate lighting for nighttime use.
  • Just past the bus stop in the photo is an example of a missing sidewalk, an eyesore and a deterrent to pedestrian shopper traffic.
  • The area contains plentiful litter, including dead leaves, paper and plastic fast food refuse, and cigarette trash.
  • Notice the two abandoned shopping carts, a frequent instance of "visual blight", and a problem cured in other cities by round the clock cooperative shopping cart patrol pickup trucks gathering shopping carts for all merchants indiscriminately, funded by the merchants.
  • The sidewalk at the bus stop is stained, dirty, an eyesore, and needs washing.
  • There are dead weeds along the wall to the right that need removing, which should be part of an ongoing landscaping effort.
  • There is an intact (still rooted in the ground) bare tree stump about ten inches in diameter and six inches high just beyond the bus stop.
  • Where the sidewalk should be, its way is blocked by an eight-foot by eight-foot irrigation-access cofferdam about a foot high and with a gate-hinged wire mesh cover.
  • The bus stop trash receptacle cover needs washing; this is an ongoing necessity for all trash receptacles, not just the ones maintained for the bus companies.
  • The bus stop area, and even more the irrigation piping easement right of way beyond it and extending out of sight to the right (north), is mostly bare dirt, and both need landscaping, which would make the area more attractive. The irrigation pipe easement could be a formal flowerbed with a walking path and benches, or other enhancement to the site. Instead, it looks like no one is responsible for maintaining it, the arch-typical symptom of blight.
• Photo number 02: Westbound Shaw Avenue, showing the bus stop just to the west of Cole.
  • This picture is an example of an otherwise attractive area marred by litter.
  • Notice that here is a proper bus passenger shelter, green grass, young trees, and a fairly attractive building (Chevy's Restaurant) in the background.
  • There is a maintenance worker in an orange work-suit, whose truck trailer is marked "City of Fresno", who just before the photo was taken cleared away major litter with a "grip-wand", and is emptying the trash receptacle for the bus stop. Much minor litter was left behind, a typical "lack of attention to detail" blight source. Why are this kind of cleanup and its visual experience enhancing results not visible at all of the Shaw Avenue bus stops? Why is the work here not done better? Litter is an offense to the eye of pedestrians, who see it all, not just to drivers who cannot see the "smaller stuff" from their cars.
  • There is room here for a flowerbed parallel to Shaw, which would significantly enhance the area.
  • Out of sight behind the photographer were two abandoned shopping carts, lying tipped sideways onto the grass. Shopping carts are frequently stolen by patrons, and then abandoned, often in sight of the retail establishment from which they were taken, and bus stops are a logical and frequent place to abandon them. This gives a terrible impression of the area to passers-by. Not merely is the visual blight offensive, but also the impression given of the morals of the inhabitants deter shoppers from frequenting the area.
• Photo number 03: Southbound Sunnyside, just north of Shaw Avenue.
  • This picture is an example of a good idea well begun but not carried to a needed completion, and also subsequently marred by other blighting factors.
  • This is the easternmost bus stop of FAX route 28. There is a nicely designed landscaped pullout for the bus. However, there is neither a bench nor a shelter canopy.
  • Notice 6 massive and unattractive portable storage units behind the bus stop, in a side paved area of the Shaw Avenue Toys R Us store.
  • There are street lights 50 feet to the north of the bus stop, and 50 feet to the south of the bus stop, but these do not provide sufficient light either for reading or for providing a feeling of night-time safety to bus passengers.
  • The sidewalk is nice and wide at the bus stop, but it is too narrow either before or after the bus stop for two, handicapped persons' battery-driven riding vehicles, to meet in safety at full speed.
  • The sidewalk is stained and ugly and in need of cleaning around the express parcel pickup depository box, the only other noteworthy feature of the bus stop.
• Photo number 04: 1420 East Shaw Avenue, looking east from the median of Shaw.
  • This picture is an example of a business place attractive when considered in isolation, but blighted by its surroundings and careless upkeep.
  • The premises are nicely landscaped, but for no visible reason, a collapsed portable barrier blocks the sidewalk in front of the building (a dental office, apparently).
  • The land to the east of the address is undeveloped, weed covered, littered, and blighted by a deliberate use of the otherwise empty lot by industrial pipe storage racks containing many lengths of stored pipe, and also by stacked storage containers, both clustered toward the front, middle of the property.
  • Abundant moonflowers break up the bleakness of the vacant lot a bit.
• Photo number 05: 1420 East Shaw Avenue, looking west across Sunnyside from the Shaw median toward the east end of Sierra Vista Mall.
  • This picture is an example of blight affecting even the best maintained retail establishments right next door, from lack of influence of those trying to avoid blight on those careless of it or promoting it.
  • Centered in the view is a large vacant lot covered with dead grass, multiple tumbleweeds, a long run of uninstalled PVC piping, and plentiful litter. This is a bit of a shame right next to what is otherwise the most desirable shopping area on Shaw Avenue.
  • A facade of landscaping in the background runs along the front of this vacant lot about one half the distance from the east-most Shaw Avenue entrance to Sierra Vista Mall and toward Sunnyside. This is partially effective, but the vacant lot behind it is still very evident.
• Photo number 06: 1420 East Shaw Avenue, looking northwest across the intersection with Sunnyside Avenue toward the Wilshire Paint retail outlet.
  • This picture is an example of how lack of attention to blighting details can degrade an otherwise exemplary retail establishment.
  • This is an example of a nicely landscaped, architecturally interesting, attractive retail building.
  • Marring this attractiveness temporarily is an abandoned shopping cart to the left of center in the picture.
  • Marring this attractiveness more permanently is a telephone junction box or similar-purposed cabinet, just to the right of center in the picture. It obstructs the sidewalk, is painted a drab color by design, made more drab by fading over time. It has been helped to be ugly by "taggers" applying graffiti with black spray paint.
• Photo number 07: Eastbound Shaw Avenue looking east toward Sunnyside Avenue and 1420 East Shaw Avenue.
  • This picture is an example of how blight can be "grand-fathered in" to an area by prior carelessly constructed blighting infrastructure elements difficult to correct or replace when later development attempts to improve and maintain an area.
  • Taking up most of the center of the picture is a large concrete access-way to some sort of underground utility services. It obstructs the sidewalk. It is ugly and unpainted. It is topped with a rusted cover comprised of angle iron and wire mesh.
  • Litter, dead grass, and dead weeds surround the access-way.
  • Two touching runs of PVC pipe each over a hundred feet long are partially visible behind the access-way. They are apparently intended to extend an underground wiring conduit, the bitter end of which can be seen protruding from the ground near the intersection well to the east of this current photo's locale. Here or further west, this PVC pipe laying waiting for use has been an eyesore for several months already. A similar length of it for a long time blocked the sidewalk in front of the developed part of Sierra Vista Mall to the extent that it would have been impassible for a wheelchair or bicycle.
• Photo number 08: Looking west toward Cole Avenue from the sidewalk on the south side of Shaw Avenue, opposite 1195 East Shaw Avenue and (far) in front of the Gottschalks retail store of Sierra Vista Mall.
  • This picture is an example of the best Shaw Avenue has to offer.
  • This photo is a model of what Shaw Avenue would look like in ideal circumstances. The median and both sides of the street are landscaped, and the landscaping is intelligently designed and thus attractive. The greenery and shade of the trees lends a feeling of peace to this part of this busy road.
  • To both sides of Shaw Avenue at this location are found clean, attractive retail establishments.
  • In the distance ahead on the left can be seen portions of a well-appointed, clean bus stop serving Sierra Vista Mall.
• Photo number 09: Looking northeast across Shaw Avenue toward Quality Carpet at 297 East Shaw Avenue.
  • This picture is an example mainly of the esthetic bleakness of large, blank walls visible from the street; other concerns are mixed into the photo as well.
  • Attractive flowers and bushes decorate the otherwise blank storefront, but are visually dominated by the vertical blank wall towering above them.
  • The otherwise messy residential back yard to the left is shielded from view by a new and attractive unpainted board fence.
  • Aboveground electrical wiring and power poles lend both visual blight and unnecessary hazard to the area between the store and the residences backing up to the store.
  • A large, ugly phone junction box obstructs part of the sidewalk's width.
  • The large, and mostly undecorated retail store sidewall could be, instead of a bleak rectangle, an attractive mosaic, mural, or other large piece of art.
• Photo number 10: Looking northeast across Shaw Avenue, just to the east of the Minniwawa Avenue intersection.
  • This picture is an example contrasting failure and success in architecture and landscaping in adjacent thriving establishments.
  • At 195 East Shaw Avenue can be seen the Old Navy retail store. It is noteworthy as an architectural deficit. The building has an uninspired "block" format, the attempt to wrap it in a metalloid sheathing just looks drab. The landscaping is uninteresting and barely worth the effort.
  • Contrast the building to the left, the Wells Fargo Bank. It has an interesting architecture, including a steep roof with peaks at the corners to break up the roofline, and an extensive and practical soffit that shades the building walls nicely. The landscaping, although in need of a trim, is very attractive. It is comprised of a mix of several kinds and heights of shrubs, which have been trimmed to lend a rolling hills appearance to the lowest tier, truncated cones to the middle tier, and contains as an upper tier trees left in their natural shape. There is also a border of flowering bushes along the near side of the building, tall enough to be visible over the lower tier trimmed bushes.
• Photo number 11: The "On the Border" restaurant, on the south side of Shaw Avenue, just to the west of the intersection with Minniwawa Avenue.
  • This picture is an example of the level of attention to detail needed to fight blight successfully.
  • The building's parking lot is fronted by attractive landscaping, a mix of flowers, bushes, trees, and grass.
  • The rococo Hispanic-derived architecture may be an acquired taste, but its viewer is at least not saddled with the boredom associated with much of Shaw Avenue architecture.
  • Most important, in the foreground (photo taken with subject's permission) is an anonymous employee, sweeping the flowerbed to get every bit of cigarette and other litter cleaned up. This attention to detail should be an inspiration and a model for all Shaw Avenue businesses, and for fighting blight everywhere.
• Photo number 12: Looking north across Shaw Avenue at the "Anchor Tenant Building Area" just to the west of the intersection with Villa Avenue. This site is easily the avatar of blight along Shaw Avenue.
  • This picture is an example of the worst Shaw Avenue has to offer.
  • Two incredibly ugly buildings comprise the site. They are at an offensive level of disrepair. None of the storefronts they provide are occupied. The building facades have lost paint almost to the point of making one doubt it was ever present. Atop the buildings one is "treated" to the sight of exposed wiring emerging from pipe conduits to run across the rooftop, and to the sight of several rusting air conditioners. Only lack of will to do the task keeps these buildings from being condemned by the city as public nuisances, and removed.
  • The "landscaping" consists of two live bushes (one barely visible), one dead bush, and two thriving tumbleweeds, fronted by bare dirt and dead weeds.
  • The pair of buildings is surrounded as a unit by a rental chain link and barbed wire topped "temporary" fence, which surrounds the buildings to no particular purpose (it should be forbidden by city code for such a fence to stand for the length of time it has already stood at this site when there is no construction or other activity taking place within it to justify its presence). The fence has mutated into mostly a container for litter, which it holds in abundance.
  • In front of the fence adjacent to Shaw Avenue sits a bus stop, missing both a shelter canopy and also safety lighting. In this area, that leaves the bus stop looking like apparently not a safe place for passengers to linger, and this appearance is probably quite correct.
  • The southwest corner of the fenced area containing these buildings sports a permanent retail signpost. This signpost is rusted and ugly. It has three frames to contain signs, but one of those frames sits empty.
  • Also in front of the fence can be seen the usual stolen, abandoned shopping cart.
  • Out of sight to the left of the picture, another storefront facing this mess has also gone vacant.
  • Out of sight behind the photographer, but worth mentioning, another, still occupied strip mall has a large trash dumpster enclosure reputed among the local homeless to be the residence of up to a dozen sleepers each night. They are concentrated in this unsanitary area mostly to avoid the ongoing harassment they receive from Clovis police trying to assure that Clovis has no homeless people by the simple recourse of making their already unhappy lives enough additionally miserable to drive them out of town. That this is not only bad public policy but also illegal and is subjecting the city to possible tort actions and damage claims is a story covered in another and continuing series of documents by the current author.
• Photo number 13: The empty storefront, formerly Bally Fitness, which sits at 284 West Shaw Avenue.
  • This picture is an example of why architectural esthetics should be considered carefully, and with a rude and ready veto available, before approving new building construction.
  • This building is an architectural disgrace and an esthetic affront, with its truncated pyramid columns, ugly proportions, and bubble gum bubble entranceway area arc protruding from an otherwise dead flat roofline. Painting it stomach medicine pink only worsens the insult to the eye, while failing to continue any coherent paint scheme to all visible walls of the building adds insult to injury.
  • The tenant, Bally Fitness, abandoned this single tenant building to share quarters instead in a nearby strip mall across Shaw Avenue and to the west. The replacement building cannot be as desirable in an abstract sense; it is set far back from the street and nearly invisible from the road to drivers along Shaw Avenue. The replacement building is, however, not nearly this ugly.
  • This building is apparently untenanted, and its parking lot is now being used as a practice area for trainee drivers by the Truck Driving Academy, not a particularly enhancing usage.
• Photo number 14: Between Villa and Peach looking northwest across Shaw Avenue. This picture is a puzzle: find the WalMart store, right in the middle of this picture!
  • This picture is an example of why even major retail businesses are hard to find or notice when not trying to find them, along Shaw Avenue.
  • Probably the largest single retail establishment between Willow and Sunnyside avenues along Shaw Avenue is effectively invisible to passing drivers except for an approximately ten square foot portion of a shared sign, visible in this photo. This is an example, probably, of sign size and number control introduced to limit "signage blight" having such an adverse effect upon businesses as to tend to "empty storefront blight" instead. Most businesses, by count of establishments, along Shaw Avenue are very difficult to find from the road from the driver's seat of a passing automobile or other motor vehicle. Lack of adequate signage is exacerbated by the lack of easily visible street numbers on most of the business establishments directly fronting on Shaw Avenue. This is of course also a fire hazard.
  • The author had been up and down this part of Shaw Avenue on foot and aboard city buses more than a dozen times before becoming aware that Clovis even contained a WalMart store, and then learned of the store by word of mouth, not from visually prominent street side advertising.
  • A contributing problem in this instance is the pervasive design along Shaw Avenue of putting the dominant retail establishment for a particular shopping center at the back of a large parking lot, and then obscuring it from view to passing drivers either partially or completely by several less prominent business establishments standing between the parking lot and Shaw Avenue.
  • Here, and in general along Shaw Avenue, the inadequate advertising signs at best alert drivers already looking for a particular business place to its location. They are essentially useless in promoting impulse shopping by motorists just seeking something to do.
• Photo number 15: This is the shared sign along the south side of Shaw Avenue for Shaw Peach Village, a typical shopping center of the sort with no one dominant retail establishment, located between the intersections of Shaw Avenue with Peach and Villa avenues.
  • This picture is an example of inadequate signage making a business place hard to find when looking for it, and even harder to notice when not actively seeking it.
  • There are twenty signs, each roughly two square foot in area, on this shared signpost, though several, perhaps matching empty storefronts here, stand blank.
  • Traffic here moves roughly 45 miles per hour.
  • Did you have time, driver, to find Impressions, Hair Gallery, Unique Expressions in Hair and Nails (the sixth sign down on the right) as you drove by the signpost? Driving west along Shaw Avenue, that's about the only evidence of the establishment you can safely find while driving, the business place with its own superposed sign is invisible until you are directly opposite it, seeing which would require driving west while looking straight south, not safe on this busy street.
  • If you found the sign, were you able to read the third line, which has type about one and a half inches tall, from around one hundred feet away? Probably not if you are one of the baby boom generation, with fifty year old eyes, who dominate our shopper population today.
• Photo number 16: 498 West Shaw Avenue, looking west across Sylmar Avenue.
  • This picture is an example of blight by the neglect of undeveloped property.
  • Directly ahead is a huge, vacant, weedy lot, rife with the usual small and large litter.
  • Next is an isolated residence, surrounded by mature trees and other landscaping. I'm sure to the owner, all of Shaw Avenue constitutes blight by now.
  • Hard to see in this photo, beyond the residence is another large vacant lot, as ugly as the one in the foreground.
  • For a distance of perhaps three-eights of a mile here, there is no sidewalk, only a very wide dusty dirt path through the weeds to indicate how heavy the pedestrian traffic is at this point, and how much suitable sidewalks are needed. Missing sidewalks, whether along developed or undeveloped lots, are symptoms of a failure of public policy to make sidewalks a public, rather than a private, responsibility. In the present case, the missing sidewalk is blight, devalues the pedestrian experience, and so discourages pedestrian shoppers to follow the south side of Shaw Avenue here to shopping destinations east and west of the undeveloped lots.
• Photo number 17: Looking north across Shaw Avenue at Shayco Computers, 493 West Shaw Avenue.
  • This picture is an example of a small, independent retail establishment doing its best to make itself both visible and attractive to both customers and passers-by.
  • An attractive, variegated flower border improves the foot of the building facing the road.
  • The building architecture is visually attractive and interesting.
  • The business purpose is made evident by not one, but three modest sized signs visible to west bound drivers along Shaw Avenue.
  • To cater to the need of passing drivers to recognize the purpose of the store in perhaps a fraction of a second that can be dedicated to that need, the signs convey the type of business with a humorous non-verbal image, in addition to the name of the business containing a descriptive noun.
  • Notice the pedestrian woman pushing a stroller containing a toddler, who has chosen to walk, and it turns out shop, in this attractive area. She returned later, her purchase clutched in her son's arms.
  • Notice too the attractive multi-tier Shaw Avenue median landscaping, a mix of small trees, bush-sized lilies (not in bloom this late in the year (September sixth)), and flowering ground cover.
• Photo number 18: A small retail trio of stores, the most prominent of which among them is Granny's Wash and Dry, the stores sharing a single building at the northeast corner of Shaw Avenue and Helm Street, all as seen looking north from the Shaw Avenue median.
  • This picture is an example of business downscaling and decay in action.
  • Downscaling happens. The building front is covered with faded, peeling paint. The main tenant is a coin laundry with cheap prices but decaying equipment. The interior is in ruins, with a pay phone long ago torn off the wall and the hole never repaired, shelves broken and screwed back together still broken, unjammed doors with the edges chipped away by time, a sink with the faucet so loose it flops and no knobs left to turn the water on or off. The walls are a collection of graffiti scratched into the faux wood paneling; the furniture is a trio of vinyl-cushioned chairs with the split cushions repaired with duct tape. The establishment contains neither restrooms for the customers nor a drinking fountain.
  • Next-door is a stodgy barbershop with super barbering salon prices but not the ambiance to justify them.
  • Filling out the set is a pet grooming salon in a neighborhood where most residents seem unable to afford to groom themselves, much less cats or dogs.
  • The true corner lot is undeveloped, which gives our target establishments a front yard consisting of dirt mixed with a small proportion of gravel and some motor oil spill stains.
  • The existing parking is probably inadequate to the businesses were each to have a full complement of customers, there is no visible handicapped parking, and the only ramp up to the sidewalk is off to the far left where it is hard to notice.
  • Off to the right, visible to drivers eastbound on Shaw Avenue, but perhaps not visible in this picture, is an unscreened dumpster enclosure with overflowing dumpsters, far behind but perhaps not really associated with the adjacent Fat Jack's restaurant.
• Photo number 19: Looking out the window of Fat Jack's Restaurant, a bit east of the intersection of Helm Street and Shaw Avenue along Shaw.
  • This picture is an example of how blight penetrates to the interior of a business establishment through the windows, decreasing customer enjoyment of patronizing the place.
  • Fat Jack's is a campy, fun, overpriced '50s style burger joint, the interior is an interior decorator's dream: see the next picture.
  • However, out the front window, the view is anything but dreamy. Customers dining with a view out front see a large ugly vacant lot. The lot is backed by a cinderblock wall partially obscuring the tops of overcrowded, much too densely spaced mobile homes, rank on rank of them.
  • The vacant lot is mostly bare dirt, with some weeds.
  • A major blighting feature of the vacant lot is a pile of broken concrete rubble, perhaps thirty feet in diameter and four or five feet high, near the back and west side of the lot.
  • Next in the foreground note the pathetically inept attempt to landscape the median of Shaw Avenue here with a single tier of low, formless bushes widely separated by brick paving of the median.
  • Closer yet are Fat Jack's own problems, the first a parking lot in which the asphalt is broken by cracks wide enough to have been filled by rubble or dirt.
  • Closest of all are parking spaces thickly coated with a caking of motor oil and dust, ready to soil the shoes and endanger the walking of approaching customers.
• Photo number 20: Interior view of Fat Jack's Restaurant.
  • This picture is an example meant to contrast the effort a retail establishment will give to its interior appearance, with the neglect it and its surrounding exterior appearances display.
  • Hard to see in the picture, Shake, Rattle, and Roll is playing on the sound system.
  • The decor is pink and gray, and everything is clean.
  • The decorating themes revolve around Elvis Presley and Coca Cola, and collectable examples of images of each adorn the walls.
  • The wait-folk are cute; the customers are young, happy middle class people.
  • Decorative "period" lighted ceiling fans supplement the air conditioning.
• Photo number 21: The flood control water catchment basin alongside Helm Street behind the Pep Boys auto business at the northwest corner of Shaw Avenue and Helm Street.
  • This picture is an example of a lost opportunity to make beautiful and attractive use of an unavoidable piece of city infrastructure.
  • Note the potentially attractive pond, cattails, white heron, and ducks.
  • Contrast that with the ugly, cyclone fenced area rimmed by dead grass and useless except for its primary purpose.
  • Deduce the lost opportunity to create instead an attractive, beautiful, landscaped, restful, wildfowl-attracting, public park right adjacent to the Shaw Avenue shopping area. All that is needed is stairs to cater to changing water levels, and re-grading and perhaps some landscape stone to turn the steep sloped basin sides into a set of terraced walkways with benches facing the water. Amazingly, the basin would probably still function equally well as a catchment for flood waters, even if it were not hideously ugly, and terracing would decrease the threat of drowning children who climb over the fence.
• Photo number 22: An unnamed alley just north of Shaw Avenue, running several blocks east beginning from Helm Street.
  • This picture is an example of ways to attract crime by neglecting blight.
  • Notice in the foreground that the asphalt pavement is in ruins.
  • Notice a pair of rusted small dumpsters, not in any screening enclosure.
  • Notice ugly, dangerous above ground electrical wires, adjacent to the back yards of a residential area.
  • Notice a residential back fence starting to collapse into the alley.
  • Notice a complete lack of lighting, and near invisibility except from directly at the ends of the alley.
  • Deduce an obvious magnet area for criminal transactions.
• Photo number 23: Near the intersection of Shaw Avenue and Helm Street, looking away from the building in photo number 18 and to the east-southeast toward and past Payday Loans.
  • This picture is an example of an inherently blighting kind of business compared to which an empty storefront would be a distinct improvement.
  • There are empty cardboard boxes littering the parking area.
  • There is the ever-popular "dead bush" style of landscaping.
  • There in the middle of the picture is an immoral business. It is one which preys on the weak, those from non-mainstream ethnicities, the economically disadvantaged, the uneducated, those not facile with English, and the unintelligent. Loan sharking and check cashing businesses, like strip clubs and adult book stores, are at the same time a cause and a symptom of blight, and they should be, and should be made to feel, unwelcome.
  • Across the street visible between the buildings is another view of "vacant lot blight"; this is not a coincidence.
• Photo number 24: Looking south-southwest across the intersection of Shaw Avenue and Helm Street towards a building newly being constructed.
  • This picture is an example of how even well intentioned upgrades can still constitute blight while in progress.
  • At least while under construction, this building will be an esthetic negative: like most unfinished buildings, it is visually unappealing. It also involves additional noise, requires ugly construction materials stacked around, involves two large piles of dirt out of sight to the right in this picture, and will raise dust to fill the nearby air.
• Photo number 25: Interior detail, coin laundry of photo number 18.
  • The pay phone has been ripped from the wall, no repair done. One patron claimed the business had been going downhill since the 1970s.
  • The split chair seats have been repaired with duct tape, a definite indication of indifference to blight and decay.
  • There is a grotesque framed poster, probably 15 years old or more, of a TV star once popular but now a household joke.
  • The visible wall is covered with scratched graffiti.
  • The rest of the place looks equally bad. Everywhere.
• Photo number 26: Looking south across Shaw Avenue between Helm Street and Willow Avenue.
  • This photo is an example of how the boring architecture typical of California strip mall development constitutes visual blight right from new construction, and probably contributes to additional blight thenceforth.
  • The shopping center shown has a long, unbroken, unvarying roofline at a single height, which makes for an ugly appearance.
  • The store signs are mostly unreadable from the road.
  • The parking lot is being re-paved, which, while good in the long run, constitutes visual blight while in progress.
• Photo number 27: Looking east onto westbound Shaw Avenue between Helm Street and Willow Avenue at 4:30 PM on a Thursday.
  • This picture is an example of traffic congestion during Shaw Avenue rush hour traffic.
  • The traffic volume on Shaw Avenue has outgrown the road, and is a problem that will deter shoppers from frequenting the area. There are an additional nine cars stopped in each row to the right out of the picture before the traffic light that has these cars stopped.
  • This traffic only gets worse for the next hour and a half or so.