Plans call for additional clearing on the north side of Granada Boulevard to begin soon.Īpparently, Mr. I don’t blame them – Get while the getting’s good, I say. Just imagine the exponential increase in noise and ruckus when our new WaWa cranks up 24-hour operations, complete with a chicken wing drive-thru’s amplified speaker barking orders over the “beep-beep-beep” of early morning supermarket deliveries.Īt least one realty sign has already sprung up across from the gash on Tomoka Avenue. Kent’s incredibly angry constituents – some of whom live many blocks away from the construction site – who report their once idyllic neighborhoods are being ruined by the near-constant roar of heavy equipment as it churns the earth off Bennett Lane. In fact, I have heard from several of Mr. They can’t afford to be – their very quality of life and property values hang in the balance. While Deputy Mayor Kent may be able to convince himself that another convenience store, co-located with a grocery operation directly abutting a long-established residential area won’t adversely impact the lives of his constituents – I assure you those who are forced to live with the fallout aren’t so damnably naïve. I mean, God forbid we should be discourteous to our government, or those who generously give us “decorative pavers” in exchange for century-old trees, “decorative street lights” for wildlife habitat. In shameless fashion, Holub reminded us ungrateful rubes that he is actually doing us a favor – while Lichtigman pulled a tag-team move, urging us hotheaded yokels to consider “reasoned debate,” you know, now that the property has been clear cut and ground into a muddy void. Holub, writing in the News-Journal’s Community Voices column, bolstered by a letter from Charles Lichtigman, chairman and CEO of Charles Wayne Properties, who played the role of the sagacious voice of reason. Then, just this morning, we endured a lecture by Mr. In a recent piece, the News-Journal found a local business owner who came off like a whimpering pantywaist, when he praised the destruction over his irrational fear of the wildlife whose habitat has now been decimated, “A lot of times we will walk or run by that place and sometimes we will cross the street because there are critters in the forest.” Perennial politician and Ormond Beach Deputy Mayor Troy Kent – who is rapidly becoming the face of this ghastly insult to the community’s collective conscience – did his best to assure us that the ugly morass of black muck where majestic, old-growth oaks once stood, “.does not change the beautiful character of Ormond Beach.”īecause it has rocked our confidence in Ormond Beach government to do the right thing, for the right reasons. So, the Daytona Beach News-Journal did the fair thing and followed up with a piece seeking the other side of the argument from Ormond Beach officials and the property developer, Paul Holub, Jr. I must admit, in these situations – where our quality of life is pissed away for what passes for “progress” and “economic development” – I lose all objectivity, and I really don’t care to hear the venal excuses of real estate developers and speculative pirates whose first, last and only concern in turning greenspace into greenbacks. The blogpost generated interest from thousands of Barker’s View readers – many of whom felt the same gut level outrage at this environmental atrocity. Earlier this month, I used this space to vent my sense of horror that resulted from the City of Ormond Beach’s acquiescence to the near complete deforestation near the intersection of Tomoka Avenue and Granada Boulevard.
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