A string of overnight vandalism incidents along Vale Avenue has left downtown merchants replacing storefront windows and comparing notes on social media, as police say they have yet to identify a suspect in at least six incidents over the past month.
At least six businesses along Vale Avenue have reported vandalism over the past month, including three broken storefront windows, two spray-painted facades and a locked bicycle rack torn from its concrete mooring, according to Bellwater police incident reports reviewed by the Times.
The incidents have rattled merchants along the six-block downtown corridor, which has spent recent years positioning itself as a walkable draw for the city’s growing biotech workforce even as some longtime shop owners struggle with rising rents. “We’ve had our share of shoplifting over the years, but this is different,” said Denny Kowalski, owner of the Mill Street Diner in Foundry Row, who said a friend who owns a Vale Avenue boutique had her window shattered twice in three weeks. “This feels targeted, or at least it feels random in a way that makes everyone nervous.”
Merchants compare notes, ask for more patrols
The Millhouse Café and Ledger & Leaf Books, two of the avenue’s longest-running businesses, have not been directly hit, but both owners said they have begun locking up earlier and installing additional security cameras. “You start looking at your own front window differently after you’ve seen five other people’s,” said a Ledger & Leaf employee who asked not to be named because store ownership had not authorized her to speak publicly.
Theresa Nakamura, executive director of the Bellwater Chamber of Commerce, said her office has fielded calls from a dozen Vale Avenue businesses in the past two weeks alone. “Individually, none of these is necessarily a citywide crime wave,” Nakamura said. “But when it’s your own storefront and it’s the third one on your block this month, it doesn’t feel small.”
We’ve asked the city for more foot patrols downtown for two years, mostly around late-night noise and parking. Now we’re asking for a different reason, and I hope that gets heard.
Theresa Nakamura, Bellwater Chamber of Commerce
City Council Member Patricia Yoon, who represents the Downtown Core district and has pushed for storefront-vacancy reforms on Vale Avenue, said she has asked the police department for a breakdown of overnight patrol coverage along the corridor. “We have spent real political capital getting new tenants into empty storefronts down there,” Yoon said. “The last thing we need is for people to associate Vale Avenue with broken glass instead of a bookstore and a coffee shop.”
Police say incidents may not be connected
A Bellwater police spokesperson said detectives have not yet determined whether the incidents are connected, noting that the vandalized businesses span several blocks and include a mix of restaurants, retail shops and one professional office. Surveillance footage from two of the incidents shows a single individual in dark clothing, but police said the images have not been clear enough to identify a suspect.
“We take property crime downtown seriously, and we understand the anxiety this creates for people who have put their savings into these storefronts,” the spokesperson said, adding that the department has added two additional overnight patrol shifts to the corridor since the incidents began.
Some merchants have taken matters into their own hands. A group of roughly a dozen business owners has started an informal text thread to flag suspicious activity in real time, an initiative Kowalski said grew out of a conversation at the diner’s counter. “We used to just gossip about slow Tuesdays,” he said. “Now we’re basically running our own neighborhood watch.”
Yoon said she plans to raise the issue at the next council meeting alongside an update on her storefront-vacancy ordinance, arguing that vandalism and vacancy are related pressures on the corridor’s recovery. “An empty storefront and a boarded-up window send the same message to a shopper walking down the street,” she said. “We need Vale Avenue to feel cared for, not just occupied.”
Police said anyone with information about the incidents should contact the department’s non-emergency line, and that they expect to release updated patrol figures for the corridor within the next month.
The vandalism has also renewed a longer-running debate among merchants about who should pay for additional private security along the corridor. Nakamura said the chamber has fielded proposals from several businesses to split the cost of a shared security patrol, an idea some smaller shop owners have resisted because of the added expense on top of rent increases many are already absorbing. “Not everyone down there can afford another line item right now,” Nakamura said. “That’s exactly why we think this is a city responsibility as much as a merchant one.”
Kowalski, whose diner sits just outside the six-block stretch that has been hit, said he has offered his own storefront’s security footage to police investigating two of the nearby incidents. “We’re all in this together down here, whether it’s a fire at my place or a broken window at somebody else’s,” he said, referencing the 14-month closure his own diner endured after a kitchen fire before reopening. “You start looking out for your neighbors differently once you’ve been the one needing help.”