BPD SHUTS DOWN TRESPASSERS IN EMPTY DOWNTOWN STORE

(Ed.'s Note: Brownsville Police Dept. officers were called to the corner of 10th and Washington streets after local residents complained that several men (two asleep inside) and a third one keeping watch outside broke into the vacant Casa Anyer, a frequently vandalized building that used to house a second-hand clothing store.

But as usual, the cops arrived too late and the trespassers were gone before they arrived. The trespassers were defiant in their occupation of the broken-into building telling a motorist that they were part "de una ganga" who would get him for taking their picture.

Since the second-hand store closed almost two years ago, its glass plate windows have been broken numerous times and used as a crash pad by vandals and drug users. The building is located half a block from City Hall and directly across 10th Street from the old Coca Cola Building now occupied by a coffee shop operated by District 4 city commissioner Pedro Cardenas and his wife.

It wasn't until a concerned citizen and local businessman Ezequiel Silva called the police on the trespassers that the city forced the owner to board and lock the building. Now the entire block looks deserted despite the millions invested city through its Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation (BCIC) to "rejuvenate" downtown Brownsville.

(The old Coca Cola building is owned by former mayor Trey Mendez, who rents to the Cardenas. Mendez, shortly after he left office, got a $75,000 BCIC grant, but was turned down for $200,000 that he and his business partner Ramiro Gonzalez had applied for when Mendez was still mayor and Gonzalez was working for the city.)

"Anyer," by the way, stand for "Reyna" spelled backwards, the name of the second-hand store owner's wife.)

Link to see picture of the First Methodist Church which stood on the same corner from a vintage postcard. https://www.ebay.ca/itm/403606295596

WHAT BUILDING STOOD THERE BEFORE: THE FIRST METHODIST CHURCH