I hope they find something good to put in its place to comemorate it like a nice shopping center

Lou, it's "creosote". Preserves timber and eliminates termites. It has a really strong sort of "antiseptic" smell. In Sydney (Australia) several of our older streets were made of these blocks. i remember, as a boy, sixty years ago, smelling the blocks burning in nightwatchmen's braziers, as our beautiful nineteenth century city was "modernised".