Haşmet Muzaffer Gürkan described a "pervading foul odor" in the avenue, where there were "no signs of life" apart from a few dairy farms and the tannery before the 1950s.[12] The northern part of the Armenian cemetery was demolished in the 1960s during widening works, particularly when Fazıl Küçük moved his practice to the area 1963, which needed to be accommodated for.To solve the problem, a deal was struck by the Nicosia Turkish Municipality and the owners, according to which restaurants could set up portable partitions without building anything.[16] When Kutlay Erk was the mayor of the Nicosia Turkish Municipality, the sculpture of a Medoş tulip, endemic to Cyprus, was unveiled in the avenue.However, shop owners claimed that issues such as traffic and safety due to drunk youths and occasional gangs also played a role in the decline in the business.[5] In 2014, Mehmet Harmancı, the mayor of North Nicosia, stated that out of 57 businesses in the area, 26 were actively violating the city planning policy.[21] It was then announced that after the building of the new road, the traffic in Dereboyu would become unidirectional, and new parking lots would be built across the river, as part of an extensive project of environmental restructuring.