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Last Updated: Sep 30th, 2006 - 06:44:24 |
COCONUT GROVE
Home Depot coming anyway
BY LAURA MORALES
llmorales@MiamiHerald.com
Home Depot has begun construction work on a Coconut Grove store -- stunning residents who have fought against the home improvement chain for two years with yard signs, petitions and a documentary on their fight.
The retail giant had pitched a Key West-inspired store designed by local architect Max Strang -- in an unsuccessful bid to win over neighbors. That plan has been tied up in appeals at City Hall.
Thursday, the company said that after tiring of the long battle, Home Depot will instead build a smaller, more generic-looking store inside the existing structure at the Grove Gate shopping center at 2999 SW 32nd St. -- plans for which the company already has a permit.
Expected opening date: spring 2007.
''Two years worth of delays have forced us to make this decision,'' Don Harrison, a Home Depot spokesman, wrote in an e-mail Thursday.
''We have made every effort to present the community with a larger, two-story store, designed by a local architect, that we still think fits nicely into the neighborhood,'' he continued. ``However, the voices of a relative few have shouted louder than the majority of customers who we believe will shop our new store.''
Despite beginning initial remodeling, the company has not withdrawn its ''Grove-friendly'' plans from city review, Harrison said. He would not comment on whether the company intends to proceed with an appeal before the City Commission over its special permit to build the 125,000-square-foot, Strang-designed store. Those plans included space for Milam's Market, the Grove's only large grocery store. The more generic store the company says it is proceeding with is 70,000 square feet. The permit for it was granted in June 2005, said Lourdes Slazyk, a city zoning administrator -- before the city passed a measure restricting the size of Grove retailers.
It does not include space for a grocery store, Harrison said. Home Depot would expand into the Milam's space after its lease expires in 2008, he added.
Grove residents have been concerned about losing the grocery store space. Their main objection to a Grove Home Depot, though, is the noise, volume of customers and the delivery trucks they believe would head to the neighborhood -- which they say is evidenced by the conditions around the store at 3030 SW Eighth St.
Neighbors realized that something was afoot this week when they saw a construction trailer inside a chain-link fence surrounding the husk of the former Kmart at the Grove Gate shopping center.
''I saw the barricades and said to myself, oh God, they're starting,'' said Myrna Hennessy, who lives a block from the site. ``Oh, it just makes my blood boil.''
''It's disgusting that they are doing this secretively, without a notice,'' said Nathan Kurland, who has attended meetings to fight against the project.
Neighbors also maintain that the company has defined itself as an industrial warehouse, which makes it unfit for a space zoned for light commercial use.
''Unless they change the manner in which they conduct their business, they do not belong'' in that zoning category, said Marc Sarnoff, who chairs the Cocoanut Grove Village Council and founded the Grove First, a group dedicated to fighting Home Depot's local plans. Sarnoff also is running for the City Commission District 2 seat, which encompasses the Grove.
Miami Beach residents also have been fighting plans by developers to build a home improvement store in South Beach.
Sarnoff said the Grove First will continue its fight.
''If they persist in trying to come into our neighborhood, then we will exercise our legal rights,'' he said.
Miami Herald staff writers Susan Anasagasti and Michael Vasquez contributed to this report.
© Copyright 2004 by YourSITE.com
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