Shaul Kuba couldn’t begin to compete with the music blaring out of the Gitano’s store on Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade. He sees it as a pathetic attempt to lure customers into the boutique. What it really does, he says, is cause shoppers to quickly walk past the area and nearby businesses.

“This is the beginning of the end,” he sighs.

Kuba, principal of CIM Group, is not a disinterested observer when it comes to the Promenade. CIM, a local brokerage and developer that owns and manages several properties in the area, was involved in reviving the Third Street shopping mall and Kuba has some strong opinions about how the area has changed for better and for worse. That’s what made him a logical choice to take us for a tour one recent evening.

“The demographic here has changed on the Promenade since 1998,” he said. “It’s become more of a younger crowd with less family-oriented activities. A lot of the shops are more fashion shops. There’s not a whole lot for a woman with kids to do here.”

Because of skyrocketing rents of up to $10 a foot, many restaurants have been bumped off the main drag for cheaper leases along Wilshire.

“I think the businesses that pioneered on the street are still here,” he notes, passing the Midnight Express Bookstore that long predates the Third Street renovation. “The people that were constantly trying to tag along are the ones no longer here.”

Sunset Bar & Grill, a small restaurant with outdoor seating next to Old Navy, is the only one of 16 original tenants left that once occupied the Old Navy space. And even Sunset had to be accommodated by building the Old Navy store into an awkward shape around the restaurant.

Same goes for Gaucho Grill. Kuba said his firm had to design a special deal with the restaurant owner who returned after being off the street for a while that kept rent prices at the level a eatery could afford.

Then Kuba turned to face the next block between Arizona and Santa Monica, and his voice got dimmer: “This is the worst block.”

The area is filled with several homeless people sprawled out on park benches and young teenage kids. Not a single security or police officer in sight.

Why has it gotten so bad?

“It is a situation where you can say people are already used to it, so why should we clean it?” Kuba says. “It’s successful with the people here, hanging out around the center court, yet the public still is accepting it. So why should we get involved in trying to move these people along? The issue is, however, that people are not accepting it. Families are not coming down here anymore.”

Perhaps coincidentally, this was the closing this month of the Disney Store at 1337 Third Street. At the front door was a homeless man with a cardboard sign. In the courtyard nearby were a couple of vagrants.

“You tell me do you see one woman walking here with her kids, with a stroller?” Kuba inquires. “All these tenants are ticked off. Disney was constantly ticked off because it wasn’t taken care of.”

He then approached a handful of orange-clad Hare Krishnas dancing to music. While street performers long have long been a lure for people visiting Third Street, the performers have changed quite a bit from even a few years ago.

Kuba’s eyes lingered long on the Hare Krishnas.

“This is just blowing my mind,” he says. “The question is, when is it going to peak and what is the future?”