The eighth-ish in our continuing series of non-biased reviews of anti-development web sites dotting the Southern California internets. This week... NO HOME DEPOT COALITION: NORTHEAST LOS ANGELES
Big-box retailers think they have it all: demographic data, traffic analysis, shipping routes, purchase patterns. But they don't have the Magic 8-Balls owned by the No Home Depot Coalition of Glassell Park and Atwater Village. And their balls have spoken: "Four Home Depots within eight miles are too many."
Thus the vacant Kmart site at San Fernando Road and Fletcher Drive remains vacant, dustily anticipating a NIMBY-approved mix of pedestrian friendliness, cute bookstores and, as the nohomedepot.org organizers demand, "restaurants like California Pizza Kitchen."
What Is It About: Aesthetics. Pedestrians. But not the kind of pedestrians looking for work outside Home Depot.
Buzzwords: "Outreach," "mixed-use," "pedestrian friendliness," "mega-store," "mini-mega-store"
Last Update: January 2007. But hey, it's working! There's still no Home Depot at Fletcher Square.
Site Design: Lots of text. Simple diagrams. More than 30 PDF pages of guidelines, ordinances and petitions. And a single click that sends email to six city officials. Almost enough data to overlook the histrionic calls to action.
Our Judgment (scale of 1 to 5 NIMBYs, 5 being best): 4.5 NIMBYs