City workers boarded up and secured the dilapidated New Orleans Visitor Information Center on Paris Road Tuesday afternoon following several complaints to Eyewitness News that its condition was hurting the return of a New Orleans East neighborhood.

The building, which is located just off I-10, has long been abandoned and an Eyewitness News crew found it with overgrown vegetation, bullet casings on the driveway, doors wide open and the inside in complete disarray.

Files that included payroll documents and other financial data sat strewn on the floor amid broken furniture, animal droppings and excrement.

Some residents say the lack of progress is especially upsetting in light of the fact the City of New Orleans actually owns the building. 

 According to a spokesperson for Mayor Ray Nagin, the city began in the mid 1990s leasing out the facility to a non-profit group that ran the New Orleans Visitors Center.  But according to a former employee of the center, the facility closed in 2004, leaving the city responsible to maintain the building for the last four years.

A spokesperson for the city tells Eyewitness News they are now working to get the documents back to the non-profit group and to determine possible future uses for the building.  The city has not yet disclosed the name of the non-profit group.

“It’s bad, real bad,” said Aaron Broussard of the Little Woods Homeowners Association.

He and several of his neighbors said they had complained to the city over a period of time and became frustrated before contacting the Eyewitness News Action line.

“I would have lost my property by now,” complained Little Woods resident Gaynel Jones. “If I wouldn’t have cut my grass and kept up with everything that we have to do, I would have lost it by now – trust me.”

Residents said they have also complained about a burned convenience store and a partially burned and abandoned apartment complex nearby.

“It’s like every month, either myself or one of our board members would get on the phone and call somebody and say, ‘Hey, what’s up. Anything happen? Nothing.’”

(Bigad Shaban contributed to this report.)