Some residents and business owners in Polk County are fed up with an eyesore near their property and say it’s not only a health hazard, it’s dangerous.
The property is on Highway 27 in Haines City.
Mike Pocquette owns a car repair business and he said he’s concerned the piles of debris on the property could fly in his yard and do some real damage if a storm hits.
“We got debris all over. We’ve got some nice high-end cars out here and you’re scraping stuff off them all the time,” he said. “And we just can’t keep up with it and we need help.”
The abandoned property was once a business called Repo Depo. But now the grass is high and what’s left of the trailers looks more like a junkyard.
Not only is the property an eyesore and a potential hazard, there’s also some unwanted visitors like rats and mice that are getting onto the properties nearby.
“The park has had a lot of problems including rodent problems from the teardown of some of the trailers over there so it’s been quite a hassle for us,” said Duke Miller who lives nearby.
Miller lives in a mobile home park right next door to the property and says their complaints to code enforcement have piled up just like the junk next door over the years.
“We’ve been in touch with them quite often and many times from many different people but nothing yet,” he said.
The county plans to clean up the property in the next two weeks. As far as demolition of these beat up trailers, the county says that could take a little longer possibly two more months. And when asked why it’s taken so long, county officials say the property owner died and it slowed the work.
A county official says they’ve been receiving complaints about the property for the past three years and hope to have in cleaned up in the next couple of months.