After piles of trash collected at a central Lubbock apartment complex, Cricket Court, surrounding businesses said the lack of maintenance is negatively impacting their customers.
“The issue is we have a hospitality business and we have guests that come in from out of town that have never been from Lubbock before and a lot of the times when the guests are checking in their first insight is that they’re in a bad neighborhood,” a Local Employee who asked to remain anonymous said. “They don’t feel safe and when they leave they tend not to want to come back.”
Several pieces of furniture, like couches and chairs, large broken televisions, mattress, and tires were abandoned and collected in a corner at Cricket Court.
“I’ve been with the company for six years and it’s been an ongoing thing,” Local Employee said. “We tend to lose revenue behind it because they don’t want to return because they don’t feel safe.”
Resident at this complex told EverythingLubbock.com the trash collection has been an issue for several months and has gotten worse in recent weeks.
Republic Services who collects trash for this property said their contract does not include picking up large items, only to empty the dumpsters on site.
City of Lubbock Code Enforcement said if this issue is not resolved soon, they will have to address the complex with possible code violations.
“For some of them it may have been their first time to Lubbock and they see the mess that’s across the street, like the furniture and the overflowing trash, it just sends the wrong message of what Lubbock is all about,” Local Employee said.
Cricket Court Management said they are aware of the issue and currently working to resolve this issue. They added this complex has had an issue with non-residents driving by and dumping their furniture on their property and now working to catch up with cleaning the mess.
In response, Code Enforcement officials said regardless of how the trash got on the property, it is the owner’s responsibility to collect the trash.
