After more than a decade left abandoned, dozens of reported fires and more than two hundred complaint calls, the building that once housed a popular burger joint at 4th and Soto streets near Roosevelt High School has been demolished.
The shell of the former Tom’s Burgers was the epicenter of a brewing public safety crisis as squatters began to occupy the abandoned building starting in 2022. Reports of fires, graffiti and encampments to 311 began to inundate city services.
On Sunday, bulldozers rolled onto the property, according to Jorge Gallegos, who owns the home next to the former eatery. Gallegos said he has endured years of stress brought on by the noise and fires coming from people inside the building. Now he’s relieved that it will come to an end.
“I’m happy because it’s finally gone and there’s no more danger of fire,” he said with optimism. Still, because the demolition eliminated the fencing between the property and Gallegos’ driveway, the homeowner said he felt nervous about having his driveway exposed.
For decades, Tom’s Burgers at 320 S. Soto Street served as a local eatery for community members around the busy intersection and hosted droves of Roosevelt High School students looking for cheap hamburger specials.
The restaurant closed in 2012 only to have the building left vacant for years. The Department of Building and Safety issued an abate order and an order to comply this year because of the dilapidated state of the structure.
Records show the late Thomas Avlonitis owned the building before his death. While his family worked to divvy up his estate and property over the years, his building in Boyle Heights was left in disarray.
In 2023, the building barrier was breached after a renovation crew came without permits or inspections, according to online records, leaving the construction job undone.
Several homeless people set up camp inside the building in the weeks following, setting fires and throwing trash and debris from the structure onto the sidewalk, according to Gallegos.
“I have called everyone I can. I called 211, 311, our Councilman, 911, police, and fire,” Gallegos listed off at a Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council meeting in late February.
“No one cares. No one does anything. This has been going on, not days, not weeks, but months. It’s been two years of hell.”
Darlene Dorado, 43 used to live in the neighborhood but was back in Boyle Heights to get groceries at the Northgate Market across the street. She said she remembers frequenting the former Tom’s Burgers close to 15 years ago and was sad to see the state the building had fallen into.
“I saw a couple of people from the street open the gate and go in,” Dorado said when the structure still stood in mid-October. “It sucks that they didn’t take care of it.”
After multiple code violations, a chain-link fence was installed around the perimeter of the building in mid-March. Squatters easily pushed the fence aside to access the building’s interior.
Construction materials and wood sat collected in buckets inside. Mattresses were shoved into corners and piles of clothing, furniture, and shopping carts were scattered throughout the interior, all becoming fuel for makeshift fires.
Between April 2023 and April 2024, the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to four reports of illegal and rubbish fires. Art Galvan, owner of California Installs, a car stereo installation business that shares a parking lot with the former Tom’s, said more fires were unreported, as he moved quickly to put out several blazes himself.
“I just went in there to make sure that it wasn’t gonna catch fire,” Galvan said. “At one point, there was nobody there, and there was a bunch of smoke coming out of it so we had to go in there and extinguish the campfire that they had.”
The building suffered its worst burn in May, prompting a more secure perimeter of fencing to be installed shortly after.
Because Avlonitis, the owner, was deceased, probate lawyers oversaw the management of the building’s future and applied for demolition to the Department of Building and Safety. A permit was issued on Nov. 4 with demolition beginning less than a week later.
Quetzal Salcido, the former owner’s grandson, is currently in a legal battle to determine the fate of his family’s property.
“We do intend to retain the property and we’ll keep on fighting for it,” Salcido said.
