RIPLEY, Tenn. — Kaleb Ellison has a nickname for the shopping center at Highway 51 and Cleveland Street in Ripley: “The Great Lakes.”
He calls it that because of treacherous potholes that are so massive they kind of look like small lakes. We measured one and it was about 5 inches deep.
Ellison’s wife had her car torn up driving over one of those potholes two nights ago.
“Knocked the side skirts off of it and cracked the bumper,” Kaleb Ellison says.
Frustrated and angry, Ellison took to Facebook and posted a funny picture of him pretending to fish in one of the potholes.
“Just get the point across that this is ridiculous. You shouldn’t have to have a 4-wheel drive truck to bring your family to eat,” he says.
Carla Cooper works in the shopping center. She says it’s been like that for years and claims the problem is rarely addressed by the property owner.
“I’ve seen them patch it one time in the past two years,” Cooper says.
The property is owned by DFC Shopping Center out of Florida. Harley White, a company representative, claims the potholes were patched right before winter and says they haven’t been patched since because of the rainy weather we’ve had in recent months.
“The soil up there, it just leads to this happening and it’s just the nature of a shopping center that has a lot of traffic,” White says.
He says crews will patch the potholes within a couple weeks.
“We’re definitely going to take care of it,” White says.
Ellison says he’ll believe it when he sees it.
“I mean, I don’t want to see anyone’s vehicle tore up. People work hard for their stuff,” he says.