Merchants get ready to throw in the towel

Several business owners in the city are frustrated by the dilapidated and decaying buildings nearby.
YOUNGSTOWN -- Joe Mozzy looks down Mahoning Avenue and wonders if the investment he made eight years ago was worth it.
Back then a fire damaged the florist shop, Sweet Arrangements, which he and co-owner Maryann Sayavich had operated for 12 years at 1528 Mahoning.
They chose to fix the store and planned the future there.
The past five years or so, however, the look of Mahoning between the Frank Sinkwich Bridge and Belle Vista Avenue has slipped, Mozzy said.
Thrift shops and bars have replaced more solid businesses such as banks. Other businesses still there don't fix up their stores like they used to.
It all makes Mozzy and Sayavich think seriously about heading to where so many more have gone: the suburbs.
"It's just progressively getting worse," Mozzy said. "I don't know how much longer we can stay here."
Sweet Arrangements is among several businesses that wrote The Vindicator, frustrated about surrounding eyesores.
Investment: Millions of dollars were spent recently on the Mahoning Avenue bridge leading out of downtown to the commercial section of Mahoning. Mill Creek Park invested $6 million more nearby in the just-opened Fellows Riverside Gardens visitor center.
Yet, not far away, a towing company's trucks and customers' cars line both sides of the street. Empty buildings are deteriorating down the street. Owners of occupied buildings aren't fixing them, either, and go largely unchallenged by the city, Mozzy said.
"This could never fly in Boardman, Poland or Canfield," he said. "It's one eyesore after another."
Mozzy doesn't have a lot of hope for the near future. The converted and expanded home where Sweet Arrangements is based could use some work, he said. Mozzy doesn't think the investment will be worth it, however, if he and his partner sell the building.
"Who the hell would move over here?" he asked.
Barber: After nearly 30 years, George Howell Jr. isn't looking to leave the city, but he may be on the move.
He's been at Hillman and St. Louis avenues since 1973. First, it was a small grocery for five years, then a music store for 18 more. In 1996 he created George's Barber and Styling Shop, the job Howell said he wishes he'd been doing all along.
The neighborhood, however, has changed far more than Howell's businesses.
Laundries, a barber, doctors' offices and restaurants all were within eyesight of his building back then.
"The neighborhood was full," he said, pointing out to a now-empty wasteland.
The area turned 10 or 12 years ago, he said. The vacant brick building across the street has no doors and is peppered with graffiti. Nearby sits another vacant and dilapidated building, and overgrown lots where others once stood surround his corner.
They contrast with Howell's red-and-white painted brick building, replete with barber's pole stenciled on the side.
Despite his devotion to the neighborhood, the lack of upkeep in this stretch of Hillman has him thinking of uprooting, probably to Market Street. Business is good on Hillman, but Howell can't go much further.
Most of his customers are on the South Side.
He's been robbed twice and now keeps the door locked all the time, letting each visitor in and out.
"After all I did here, no, I don't really want to move," Howell said.
But in a lower voice, he adds, "I've about given up, too."