Home Depot Wants In, but Some Arms Aren’t Open on Home Services

Dec

Home Depot Wants In, but Some Arms Aren’t Open

posted by admin in Home Depot

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 10 A proposal to open a Home Depot is deeply dividing the mostly rural area of Sunland in northern Los Angeles, but not for the usual reasons.

Opponents say they have no quarrel with a big-box store, but they want a large general-merchandise retailer, one that sells socks, not sockets. They fear that an outpost of the giant home-supply chain will bring too much truck traffic and hurt Sunlands several hardware stores.

But Home Depot officials and supporters of the planned store argue that the objections are a smokescreen to conceal racist fears that it would attract scores of predominantly immigrant day laborers.

Ali Moderras, an expert in urban geography at the Pat Brown Institute at California State University, Los Angeles, said the Home Depot should have conducted environmental impact and traffic studies from the beginning, even though the city did not initially require the review.

Market research is not enough any more,Mr. Moderras said. You really need the community support.

this is a national problem. We will see more and more people waking up and objecting to some huge store popping up in their neighborhood.

After more than 600 people attended a recent, and raucous, Los Angeles City Council meeting that quickly erupted in arguments over race and immigration status, the Council is considering whether to allow construction to proceed or to revoke the companys building permits and require an environmental impact and traffic study. A vote is expected by Aug. 17.

Its not too often that our building permits are revoked,said a spokeswoman for Home Depot, Kathryn Gallagher. Weve been working with the city from the beginning.

Home Depot has spent more than $2 million over more than two years trying to open the store on the site of a 93,000-square-foot Kmart that closed a few years ago. Ms. Gallagher emphasized that Home Depot was committed to opening it even if the review process took another year or two.

At a more tempered Council meeting on Tuesday, several Latinos said in Spanish or halting English that they supported Home Depot because it would bring jobs to the area.

A local contractor, Jose Yglesias, told Council members to focus their attention not on Home Depot but on solving problems of crime and drug use in Sunland. Since he moved to the area 10 years ago, Mr. Yglesias said, two of his cars have been stolen and his young son brought home crystal meth.

We have a problem in our schools, Mr. Yglesias said. Theres a lot of drugs going on. There is a lot of car thieves around. Lets take care of the drugs, not Home Depot.

Some local opponents countered that Home Depot has bused in Latinos to create the illusion of community support, while ignoring the sentiments of residents.

They manufacture support, and they manufactured this racism thing, said Joe Barrett, a prop designer for feature films. Theyre trying to detract from the real story, and that is traffic and all their trucks.

Mr. Barrett was referring to trucks delivering merchandise to the store as well as those belonging to contractors and other customers. The store is close to an elementary school and a mobile home park for the elderly.

Ms. Gallagher said the company did not pay supporters to attend Council meetings but did acknowledge that it took them to and from the meeting and furnished them with Home Depot T-shirts. The Los Angeles Daily News, on its Web site, posted a memorandum leaked from a public relations firm hired by Home Depot that detailed how more than $24,000 was spent recruiting, feeding, clothing and busing crowds from Sunland, Tujunga and adjacent communities to City Hall to express support for the planned store.

At a packed meeting of the Council planning committee meeting, the councilwoman representing Sunland, Wendy Greuel, urged her colleagues to revoke Home Depots building permits because its construction constituted more than a remodeling of the Kmart site because a new floor, new walls and a new ceiling had been added.

The committee agreed, leading to next weeks vote by the full City Council, which could require Home Depot to scale back its plans to accommodate traffic and other concerns. John Song, a Korean-American and the owner of a hardware store in Sunland, said that for him, objections to the new store had nothing to do with race.

This is going to kill my business, Mr. Song said.