Residents Oppose Home Depot’s Move

At a tense public meeting this week concerning Home Depot’s plans to open a new store on Roscoe Boulevard, store officials offered free cookies. But angry residents didn’t bite.

About 250 people packed a ballroom Thursday at the Airtel Plaza Hotel to oppose plans to relocate the company’s store at Roscoe and Balboa boulevards to a larger site on the southwest corner of Roscoe Boulevard and Woodley Avenue with more parking and amenities. While concerns about traffic and noise surfaced, the meeting centered on the issue of day laborers.

Residents said the new store would attract mostly Latino laborers who have caused trouble at other Valley stores by loitering in parking lots and disrupting residential streets in search of work.

About two dozen members of the largely white audience took turns at a microphone, unanimously opposing the new store, tying it to the day laborers and, by extension, to immigration. Dex Morris, an activist who helped organize Thursday night’s meeting, drew cheers and whistles as he pounded the lectern.

“These day laborers are your tax money, folks,” he said of the workers who often are paid in cash.

“It’s subsidized tax evasion. And our money is also going to feed them, medicate them, educate them. What would happen if I were down in El Salvador right now? I’d be on a bus back home, that’s the best I could hope for!”

Snickers greeted the suggestion of Home Depot consultant Tom McCarty that a day-laborer hiring center, like those tried elsewhere in the Valley, could work in Van Nuys.

McCarty, who has worked with city officials on the day-laborer issue, said such centers keep laborers off private property.

Home Depot is in escrow for the new store site and is seeking city approval for the project.

Home Depot real estate manager Greg George expressed surprise at the vehemence of residents’ reactions.

“We believe we’re creating a better situation,” he said. “We thought we would be welcomed with open arms.”