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YOU ASK. WE INVESTIGATE. Business owner fed up with tagging on his building in downtown Las Vegas

Posted at 6:39 PM, Apr 24, 2017
and last updated 2017-04-25 17:46:56-04

A Las Vegas business owner says vandals are overtaking his property and nearly driving him out of the neighborhood, but others in the neighborhood say it's partly his fault.

A1 Office Machines has called Commerce Street and Charleston Boulevard home for almost 50 years. In the past few years, Rich Attisani says the neighborhood has changed. 

"We've always had a minimal amount of graffiti," Attisani said. "Once the Arts District started it was supercharged. Quintupled, minimum."

Attisani said he just had the building repainted, only to be tagged with graffiti yet again. He thinks taggers are being inspired by the murals in the neighborhood.

But another local business owner and the Arts District board president says it's not the murals, but the condition of Attisani's building drawing in taggers. 

"It's easy to tag properties that look dilapidated because you assume that nobody's there and nobody's going to catch you and those are the properties that they're going after," Derek Stonebarger said. 

Stonebarger encourages other business owners to embrace local muralists, and if that doesn't fit your business, make your building look like something they wouldn't want to tag.

"The vandal murals that were put up, they didn't just do that in five minutes, they spent probably five to six hours designing those huge murals and nobody was on site to stop them," Stonebarger said.

Stonebarger said he is willing to work with Attisani and waive fines for the tagging if he will work with them to fix up his building.