Home Depot decision put off after hearing

From today's Chronicle, "Home Depot, the retailing giant that has been trying for the past decade to open a store in San Francisco, agreed late Tuesday to scale back the size of its proposed project in a last-ditch effort to win support at City Hall. The Atlanta-based company agreed to submit its revised blueprint to city planners within the next week, lopping 33,000 square feet off its planned 140,000-square-foot store."

And from another Chron article today, "The proposed site is located at 491 Bayshore Blvd., straddling the Bernal Heights and Bayview neighborhoods. Near U.S. Highway 101, the site also borders the supervisorial district of Tom Ammiano and Sophie Maxwell and the two supervisors have taken opposite sides on the issue."

Looks like the vote has been delayed one week, and with the reduced size, it appears that it will pass with a majority of the Supervisors next Tuesday. I really don't believe that the positive impact of 150 jobs will every come close to outweighing the damage that Home Depot will do to the community feel of San Francisco. Does anyone really care about driving an extra five minutes to Colma? Really?

"Rick Karp, president of Cole Hardware, which operates four stores in San Francisco, has his own take on jobs: Put Home Depot in town and his business and other small retailers will be forced to lay off their workers. "I ask you to consider the urban decay of our neighborhood commercial areas,'' he said to the supervisors."

The Examiner also has coverage of last night's extended meeting.