Home Depot decides against Lorraine Road store

The last thing Esplanade Golf and Country Club resident Lin Harvard said she wanted to see from the fifth fairway of her home golf course was a Home Depot. 

“It’s expensive to live here,” she said. “This just wasn’t what I was expecting to move into my backyard.” 

Harvard and over 2,000 others signed a petition aimed at stopping Home Depot from building a store near the northwest corner of Lorraine Road and Rangeland Parkway.

Home Depot was scheduled for a pre-application meeting on Sept. 13 with Manatee County, but the meeting has since been canceled. 

“The Home Depot is dropping the contract on this specific site due to a number of land development challenges,” Sarah McDonald, the director of Home Depot Public Affairs and Community Investments, wrote in an email. 

The proposed site was a combination of three privately owned parcels. None of the parcels was owned by Lakewood Ranch developer Schroeder-Manatee Ranch.

While they can breathe a sigh of relief now, local residents were making it known they were worried about semi-truck traffic they expected a Home Depot to generate.

“We have several kids in our neighborhood, who go to Lakewood Ranch Preparatory Academy, and they ride their bikes,” said Lorraine Lakes resident Mary Buck before Home Depot announced its decision to drop pursuit of a store in that location. “This would become a major intersection.” 

Mallory Park resident Maryann Goetsch said a lot of children in her neighborhood attend Gullett Elementary School and Dr. Mona Jain Middle School. 

“It’s alarming to me, as a parent, that we’d want that kind of big box store with commercial traffic plopped in the middle of a residential neighborhood,” Goetsch said. 

Besides starting a petition, within days residents had created a website, opened a Facebook page, bought signs and T-shirts, and launched an email drive with a QR code to protest. 

On Sept. 3, Harvard and Esplanade neighbor Dan Creek drove to the corner in a golf cart, set up a chair and took turns waving the one sign the group had at the time. Additional signs were on order. 

Creek said about 30 residents had agreed to wave signs on that corner. He was going to schedule people in pairs for two-hour shifts between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. 

Cars honked in support as they drove by Creek and Harvard. One driver stopped and gave them a $20 bill to help the cause. 

Photo by Lesley Dwyer

Manatee County commissioners stayed quiet on the matter. 

Commissioner George Kruse explained that there was nothing to actually comment on because commissioners didn’t have all the information yet. 

Home Depot didn’t respond to any follow-up questions as to what the specific challenges for development were. 

“I think there’s a floodplain behind the property they were going to build on, and they were having some development concerns,” Creek said. “But I think that we might have pushed them over the edge. They might have continued had they not seen the community was so adamantly opposed to it.” 

Neighbors, who signed the petition, certainly don’t think the group’s efforts were done too soon or in vain. When the Neighbors Against the Home Depot at Lorraine and Rangeland posted a request to Facebook for $433 on Sept. 8 to cover its costs, $275 came in within a day. 

The cash and Venmo transfers came with comments thanking the group for its hard work. 

Carolyn McDevitt posted, “Once again, there is power in numbers!!! Hopefully, we won’t have to do this again.” 

Creek isn’t letting his guard down.

“The team still needs to be diligent and continue to closely monitor the Manatee County Board of Commissioners agenda items to make sure that this thing doesn’t pop up again in the very near future,” he said. “We’re still engaged, and we’re still going to monitor this stuff.” 

Republican Robert McCann, who won the primary, is running for the District 5 seat on the commission to represent the Lakewood Ranch area. He was one of the recipients of the email blasts, along with the seated commissioners.

“If (a project) goes to the commission, it’s too late,” McCann said of the protests. “But somebody has to put in a plan to be reviewed, that’s when the timeline starts, so that’s the time to react.”

McCann’s advice is for concerned citizens to go to their district commissioner first to see what they know or can find out about the project when it’s in the pre-application stage. When in the application stage, he said to make sure there are reasons on behalf of public health and safety as to why the project shouldn’t be approved. Then alternatives could be offered. 

“Through the success of our efforts, we raised significant awareness to this,” Creek said. “Others are beginning to emulate our actions and become engaged politically in the community.”