Home Depot ignores overtures

In Response to M. Garbett's letter [Grove should work with Home Depot,'' Feb. 13]:

There's no working ''towards getting Home Depot to scale down to the original ``light'' concept you suggest. There was never a Home Depot ''light.'' This ''light'' thing started when someone erroneously applied the term to Home Depot Expo, which is being phased out. It intends take over the entire shopping center, which can't compare with the previous tenant's use of 70,000 square feet.

On Jan. 10, Home Depot representative Diana Garza, e-mailed me, ``City officials made it clear that there are concerns in the local community that The Home Depot must address. Our representatives assured the city officials that we intend to earn the support of the local community and will do our utmost to properly address all of the issues identified thus far.''

At the top of her list: ''General conditions of the exterior of The Home Depot on Southwest Eighth Street'' (the city gave it five citations for C1 code violations.

This week, Home Depot's parking lot was once again in full code-violating splendor, which shows what it thinks of the city, its citations and citizens.

Garza also said ''As shortly as possible, we would like to meet with interested local residents and business owners to present our preliminary plans and secure feed-back. This will likely be the first of a series of such meetings.'' We responded with immediate invitations to One Grove Alliance and Village Council meetings, which went ignored. On Jan. 31, I extended another invitation. Her response was, ''We are unfortunately not available to meet at the upcoming meeting. We will keep you posted on any meeting we do arrange.'' Sounds like a blow-off to me.

You say our opposition 'smacks of NIMBY `not in my back yard' mentality.'' That phrase implies uninformed, knee-jerk reactionaries. Be clear, our opposition stems from countless hours of careful research.

I'm guessing you don't live on Bridgeport Avenue, the most affected of those backyards, but I'm hoping you join me in their support. Home Depot doesn't belong in anyone's back yard. It belongs in an industrial-commercial part of town.

LILIANA DONES

COCONUT GROVE

Hot Link for letters long URL