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A San Antonio dessert maker shut down her storefront service – scaling back to only operating a food truck and catering business – after finding her business a repeated target of burglaries and break-ins.
"I think when we first moved in, everything seemed lively. We had Bob’s Burgers next door. The bar across the street was great," Ana Fernandez told KSAT. "We had closure all around. Bob’s closed, and then the subsequent business also closed within a year. Once that second business closed, we were just vacant. So we’re just kind of sitting here in the middle of a dark neighborhood."
Fernandez is the owner of Chamoy City Limits, which serves up ice cream, shaved iced, chili and chamoy-flavored snacks.
The dessert shop, which has been located on West Hildebrand Avenue in San Antonio for the last three years, has been forced to call police 19 times between February and October for break-ins, suspicious persons or burglaries.
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Chili chamoy candy apple coated with sweet and spicy chili and tamarind flavors at the San Diego County Fair in Del Mar on June 27, 2018. (Mark Rightmire/Orange County Register via Getty Images / Getty Images)
"There’s been about eight incidents. There’s been about 10 calls to [the San Antonio Police Department] related just in the strip mall alone," Fernandez told KSAT. "I had gone like almost eight years in business with no incidents, and then one day, my generator is gone."
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"Somebody cracked the front window with a rock. They stole the air conditioner from the roof," she added. "A burglar came in in the middle of the night, cracked the door open, broke the glass and the door, stole the cash register. We’ve got kind of shady characters just throughout coming around and intimidating us at night."
Chamoy City Limits location in San Antonio, Texas. (Google Maps)
Fernandez said that after other businesses left the area, she was the only store open after dark, and argued the streets don’t have enough lighting. City officials told Fernandez that additional lighting could not be added to the area where her business is located, according to KSAT. A city spokesperson told the outlet that the street already has lights closer together than what is required by city code and that the city can’t add more lights near railroad tracks.
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West Hildebrand Avenue in San Antonio, where Chamoy City Limits is located. (Google Earth)
"We’re just kind of sitting here in the middle of a dark neighborhood," said Fernandez. "We don’t want to work after dark, so we had to close at 7 p.m., and now with the time change, we are closing at 6 p.m. That dramatically cuts into our business because we have the business to support it."
"Essentially, when I signed my lease, I didn’t intend to rent a space in a vacant semi-abandoned strip mall, and that’s how it feels," said Fernandez.
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Fernandez’s lease expired in October, but the owners of the building are allowing her until the end of November to move out. She will then only run her food truck and catering business.