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Quit griping; Wal-Mart is what Tarpon really needs

I am a real, live business owner located smack dab in the middle of Tarpon Springs. I am sick and tired of all these people who have nothing better to do with their lives but hop on bandwagons.

Today it is Wal-Mart, tomorrow some other ridiculous issue that doesn't affect them. As a business owner, I want to see Tarpon Springs grow, which it has not done in the many years I have been here - unless you count the endless and tasteless gated communities and condos that are popping up everywhere. Why isn't anybody complaining about that?

Half of these people who are complaining about Wal-Mart landing on a precious piece of the environment are living on what was once a precious piece of our environment. Why didn't they complain about the developer that built their little walled-in neighborhoods?

Sure, Wal-Mart is wanting to build on the land near water. Where is your home? To the more recent Tarpon dwellers, what if we all protested your developer and you weren't permitted to build here? Where would Tarpon Springs be? Well, probably still in the "Sponge Age."

The bottom line is that what is good for the goose should be good for the gander. I and many of those I do business with support Mayor Beverley Billiris and the City Commission.

My father always told me, "There is nothing better for business than competition." Having a Wal-Mart and whatever other kind of "mart" will only improve our town. How? By making small-business owners (including myself) realize that we are not the only game in this town and make us try to better our services and better our customer relations. Some businesses in this town think that they are God's gift to the community and treat the locals and tourists in that manner.

Well, here comes a tall glass of reality. Get it together or you'll be giving up some serious numbers to the Future-Marts. I love this town and hate seeing abandoned buildings due to lack of interest, so if Wal-Mart is the shot in the arm we need, I say hook us up to the IV.

Opponents stifled plans to revive Clearwater

Re: Downtown charm has been lost, letter, Jan. 26.

It appears that the letter writer has a tremendous ability to grasp the obvious. Unfortunately, he apparently has not indulged in research of the subject at all.

He blames the Clearwater mayor and City Council for the condition of downtown. The slightest check will reveal that the mayor and City Council have strongly pushed two referendums that would have brought a new and vibrant downtown.

A rather secretive group calling itself Save the Bayfront has received questionable donations both from nonresidents of Clearwater and those within the city limits in order to stifle any hope of progress.

The writer may have been born and raised in Clearwater, but he has not been here to encounter the likes of Anne Garris and Fred Thomas; that is where the blame for the wretched state of Clearwater can be placed.

Library project arose after careful study

Re: City of Largo needs reality check, letter, Jan. 16.

I agree that the whole Commissioner Charlie Harper affair is probably being blown out of proportion. However, it is not Largo doing the blowing. By the time the St. Petersburg Times is finished with the matter, I am sure we will all be a little wiser and a lot sorrier.

Somehow the writer manages to segue from this non-issue to make an issue of the city at last addressing its problem with diversity, or a lack thereof. She then launches an attack on Largo's library building project. I would like to refresh everyone's memory on how this project came to be.

The new library building is not needlessly lavish, unneeded or unwanted. Before undertaking the project to build a new library building, the city commissioned a study that found we would need a 93,000-square-foot library by the end of the decade. Rather than tearing down our old library building, as Clearwater did when building its new library, we are reusing ours.

The current building, while aesthetically pleasing in many ways, no longer meets the need of its users. It is too small and too crowded. It cannot house the services the library users need, expect and deserve. It serves a larger population and contains a larger collection than some other area libraries, and stuffs it all into a smaller building.

It is so easy to backseat-drive a government. It is far harder to actually sit behind the wheel. I think the City Commission and staff deserve some praise for providing services as efficiently as they do. Especially praiseworthy are the library staff and volunteers. I have seen them in action and believe there are none better in Pinellas County.

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[Last modified January 27, 2005, 00:40:21]