How appropriate! Home Depot wants to build a 132,000 s.f. store on a road called Greenback Lane. But many of the residents of Orangevale, California would apparently prefer to see the land in question remain a strawberry field. On June 1, 30 people came to a meeting of the Orangevale Community Planning Advisory Council meeting to begin the battle against an Orange store in Orangevale — but it wasn’t even on the agenda. About a month ago, neighbors learned that Home Depot had filed plans to build a store on nearly 11 acres of land. The project, because of its size, will need an environmental impact report under the state Environmental Quality Review Act, which could take several months, but opponents are wasting no time. “We could have had 500 people here”, resident Tim Wilson told the Sacramento Bee. The local Chamber of Commerce reports that it has received numerous phone calls from people against Home Depot. “The residents are not very pleased about it because of the impact on traffic,” a Chamber official said. The property is surrounded by residential land, and the piece Home Depot wants is currently zoned for agricultural and residential use. It’s rezoning is thus a wholly discretionary act on the part of the Orangevale Board of Supervisors, and is not a required action. Neighbors are also concerned that truck traffic will be routed along the path of two nearby elementary schools. Neighbors should also be concerned about the public safety issues that a Home Depot raises in a highly populated area. Warehouse stores present special challenges to fire departments, as Home Depot fires in Tempe, AZ and Quincy, MA have shown.
For more information about the growing opposition to a Home Depot on Greenback road in Orangevale, contact info@sprawl-busters.com
