Mid-Academy Boulevard

You could say that Academy Boulevard is the main drag here. It goes all the way from the very south end of town to the Air Force Academy. The middle section of Academy, bounded by about Palmer Park Boulevard to the south and Constitution to the north, has been in a sort of depressing limbo for years now. Academy is six lanes wide, not including turn lanes, and this part of it has a large median in separating the northbound and southbound lanes, large enough for a strip mall, in fact. It's been almost entirely empty for some time now, although there was a watch repair shop and a hookah lounge that hung on for a few years even after the rest of the strip mall became vacant. But up until the early 2000s it was full and bustling. In the 1990s there was a place called Housing Helpers, where I worked for about a year. It was my first ever office job; before that I had only worked in retail and restaurants. There was also the aforementioned watch repair guy, a large chain record store where several of my friends worked over the years, the Yakitori restaurant where I ate lunch most days (it's long since been relocated to Austin Bluffs Parkway), a plus sized clothing consignment shop, and I think there was a least one insurance agent to round things out. But times change, and recently the strip mall in the middle of Academy Boulevard was torn down. I believe yet another giant convenience store/gas station is going up in its place.