Your Home — or Home Depot? That’s the choice facing as many as 1,000 residents of Inglewood, CA, who will have to find another place to call home if the Depot gets its way. Apparently the Inglewood Planning Commission last month approved the design for a Home Depot on Century Boulevard. The new store would be located right next to a Costco and — how cozy — a Home Base. To get the Home Depot to fit in right next to one of its main competitors, the city will have to displace over 200 residences and 1,000 people. The community is apparently giving the world’s largest building supply store access to state tax dollars in the form of noise mitigation funds and Redevelopment Agency funds by declaring the construction site as “blighted”. A similar effort in Chula Vista, CA to use public redevelopment funds for a Wal-Mart was thrown out in court — but after the store had already been built. Store opponents have asked city officials why there is any need for a second home improvement store in the same location as a Home Base. Residents have questioned to what degree such redundant over-storing of the area will aid in revitalization, or to what extent this is simply the first step in the creation of a dead mall? One resident of Inglewood asked what made officials believe Home Depot would revitalize the area is Costco and Home Base failed to do so? Charges have been leveled at city officials that most residents did not even realize the Planning Commission meeting in early March was for the purpose of considering the design of a Home Depot.
Why not email Home Depot by going to their website, and sending a letter to Bernie Marcus. Tell Bernie you’re not in favor of using state tax dollars to subsidize a multi-billion dollar operation like Home Depot. Ask Bernie if Home Depot is prepared to build homes for the 1,000 residents of Inglewood, CA who are being needlessly removed from their home just so an Atlanta company can gain more market share in California. I thought Home Depot helped to build communities, not take them apart.
