Orange County Register

With its bright red sign, Adray’s appliance and electronics store at 1809 W. Chapman Avenue looks inviting seen in the mid-afternoon sunlight.

But take a closer look.

Graffiti is scrawled across the front windows and side walls. McDonald’s cups, chunks of drywall and other discarded trash litter the abandoned parking lot. In the back alley behind the building, a filthy mattress is shoved into a corner cluttered with garbage.

Adray’s has been closed since 1998 when store owner Lou Adray abrubtly shut its doors after 30 years of operation in Orange. Nearly a decade later, with no sign of reopening, the deserted property has become an occasional haven for sleeping homeless people, drug use and vandalism.

“Every time I get rid of a mattress, someone else drags in another one,” Adray said. “People use this place as a dumping ground.”

Adray visits his store about every two weeks and maintains the property’s cleanliness by hiring landscapers, but the retired owner said that it isn’t easy to control trespassers.

“The Orange police department is constantly making people leave the back end of the property,” he said.

Neighbors behind the old Adray’s location are also feeling the effects.

Benjamin Flores, 55, who has lived behind the property for 20 years, is tired of calling the police about people drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana late at night behind the vacant building. Police response time is too slow, he said, and by the time they get there, the loiterers have usually fled.

Even though a seven-foot-high wall separates Flores’ yard from the back of Adray’s building, the long-time resident has had many intruders in his cul-de-sac over the years.

Discarded trash clutters the space between Flores’ and his closest neighbor’s yards. One palm tree is defaced by graffiti, which has remained for almost two years, despite complaints from Flores’ landlord to city officials.

Flores wishes that police would patrol Adray’s more often.

“We need more police coming around more often and more cleaning here,” Flores said. “This is a place for family.”

Orange Police Sgt. Tom Bevins said that patrol cars try to check known hangouts behind businesses on the West Chapman corridor often, but they must be fair in their deployment.

Flores thinks that if Adray’s reopened, fewer miscreants would congregate in the area, but the owner is not changing his mind any time soon.

“I’m retired,” Adray said. “The plan right now is the lease sign outside.”

– David Hall

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