Home Towns, or Home Depot? on Home Services

Nov

Home Towns, or Home Depot?

posted by admin in Home Depot

Home Depot likes to say: Good Things Happen When Home Depot Comes to Town. Many communities around the nation have fought bitterly to prevent Home Depot’s brand of good things from happening to their town. Here is a home-town tour of communities that have had close encounters with the orange-blooded company:

Santa Rosa, CA : Journey’s End for Home Depot. On a warm afternoon in early June, 1995, Lola Strom, a senior citizen who lives in the Journey’s End Mobile Park in Santa Rosa, opened her mail to find a letter from a company called Crossroads R/W. It says on their letterhead that they are Governmental Acquisition & Relocation Specialists. The letter informed Lola that the owners of her Mobile Park were planning to change the zoning of her park and close it down. They have found a buyer, the letter continued, the Home Depot company, who plans to build a new retail store on the property after the park closes and after all the residents are properly relocated into new housing situations. Lola learned that Home Depot would prepare a Relocation Plan for all the elders in the park. They will receive information, counseling, moving assistance and other benefits which will ease the burden and costs of moving. We fully understand the effects of relocating from a place that has been home’ for many years, the company assured Lola. Please do not feel compelled to move out, the letter added, until the new store and the Relocation Plan are approved by the Santa Rosa City Council. Lola was told she would be given 6 months notice of the park’s closing. The 200 elderly residents would have to move so that Home Depot could lease the land to build a 154,000 square foot store on the north end of Mendocino Avenue. It’ll break our hearts when we have to leave here, one elderly resident told the media.

But Lola and her neighbors never had to move. They began gathering petitions asking city officials to reject Home Depot. The City Manager came out against converting 13 acres of residential land into retail. After all, Santa Rosa’s General Plan for land use called for preserving existing mobile homes, and preventing conversion of mobile home parks to other uses. Home Depot was undeterred. We’re confident that the opposition will recede, HD lawyer said, calling conversion of the park inevitable. HD had recently converted 39 mobile homes in Seattle, WA into a new store–so why not here too? They have a great tiger by the tail, warned the mobile park residents. The elders began appearing weekly at City Council meetings, and plans were underway for a 5 hour picketing session at a nearby Home Depot.

The picketing never happened, because Home Depot decided to relocate their proposal instead of relocating the elders. They said it was generating more heat than they wanted to endure, said Mayor Jim Pedgrift. For HD, it was the Journey’s End. But it was a Journey that never should have begun. Home Depot unsuccessfully tried to add one more home to their chain, by closing the homes of the elderly. Since withdrawing from Journey’s End, HD has explored at least two other sites in Santa Rosa. Each time, the elders have followed their moves, urging public officials to keep them out of Santa Rosa city limits.