Graffiti spree angers center's shop owners

Alex Newman
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL


HOW TO HELP
Police are asking anyone with information to call Secret Witness at 322-4900 or the Regional Gang Unit at 334-3852.

Everything inside "Polished," the newest addition to the Smithridge Plaza in Reno, is fresh. The brown paint on the counter, the window vinyl and the sets of pedicure chairs lining the wall are only days old.

So is the graffiti scratched across the front door and window.

"Polished," a manicure and pedicure shop, is one of 40 businesses vandalized early Thursday morning when someone scratched initials into 76 windows throughout the Smithridge Plaza, causing about $50,000 in damage, the Regional Gang Unit said Thursday. No one has been arrested, but police had no further update Friday.

The letters "JRB" were scratched into the front doors and windows of the businesses in the strip mall at South Virginia Street and McCarran Boulevard, marring window vinyl and ruining the glass.

Most of the small business owners in the complex said they're waiting to replace their glass, hoping some kind of cost-cutting arrangements can be made, they said.

Otherwise, they'll be stuck paying their $500 or $1,000 insurance deductible to fix the damage.

In the meantime, though, they're angry.

Charlotte Nicolls of Reno, the owner of "Just 4 Pets," said her business was similarly vandalized nine years ago.

She pointed to a smaller, more curved "JRB" scratched onto the window. She didn't replace the glass because the graffiti was so small.

"Looks the same to me," she said, although police told her the etchings were made by different people.

She, like other business owners, is angry.

"It's just not fair," Nicolls said. "We have to pay for somebody else's playtime."

Andrew Dang and Tawny Ho, the co-owners of "Polished," couldn't put up the window vinyl listing their store's hours because the glass door needs to be changed.

"Polished" has been in business 11 days.

"I was shocked, really," Dang said. "I thought this was a pretty nice neighborhood."

The tenants of Smithridge Plaza aren't strangers to graffiti.

The back walls of the building are spray-painted with graffiti pretty regularly, store owners said.

"We can paint over that," said 14-year tenant Vicky Miller, owner of A Stitch in Time. "That is not a big expense. There's never been anything like this where it's very destructive."