{"id":198,"date":"2006-01-23T21:48:08","date_gmt":"2006-01-24T02:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=198"},"modified":"2007-11-10T13:35:23","modified_gmt":"2007-11-10T18:35:23","slug":"less-than-moral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=198","title":{"rendered":"Less than moral"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carol’s car wouldn’t start, which meant she had to stay up in Cambridge a couple of extra nights. She was supposed to go to a meeting of New Bedford Public Interest<\/a>, but since she couldn’t, she sent me instead.<\/p>\n

A little background for those of you who live outside New Bedford: the Fairhaven Mill building at the head of New Bedford harbor has been in limbo for many years. The first floor houses an antique market, there are a few other businesses, but mostly the building is empty. Given its location right on the Acushnet River with beautiful views of the harbor and the city, and given the fact that it sits right next to an interchange on Interstate 195, the site is ripe for creative development.<\/p>\n

What I learned at the NBPI meeting is that Home Depot is trying to push a deal through the city quickly, a deal that will allow them to erect a big-box retail store on the mill site. Of course, their business plan does not allow for such contingencies as utilizing a historic brick mill building that happens to stand in a very visible spot, so they will bulldoze the building. According to Home Depot, decisions have to be made quickly, there is no time for long studies or discussions, the city council has to vote now.<\/em> The New Bedford city council voted to bulldoze the building.<\/p>\n

To be fair to the city council, Home Depot holds out the prospect of 400 jobs coming from this development, which means a lot in a city like New Bedford. But the city councilors forgot to ask if that meant 400 net new<\/em> jobs for the city; or if, as was the case when Home Depot built a store on Cape Cod, there will in fact be a net job loss for the region.<\/p>\n

You know the rest of the story: most of the people in the surrounding neighborhood are not well off, many are people of color, and the nieghborhood looks like it’s unlikely to cause any trouble to Home Depot. So yes, this is a classic ecojustice issue of putting less desirable development in poorer communities.<\/p>\n

I hate to see an outside corporation bulldoze a historic building, destroying some of New Bedford’s sense of place, simply because their business plan is inflexible. As a minister, it’s my job to point out when a person or group of people is being less than moral and ethical. Home Depot could be ethical and moral corporate citizens and figure out a way to use the historic mill building, and grace a poorer neighborhood with a more attractive development. This could be a win-win situation — but so far Home Depot refuses to bend. Personally, I think they should be ashamed of themselves.<\/p>\n

The NBPI Web site<\/a> has links to New Bedford Standard-Times<\/em> coverage of the situation. Read the stories, do some investigating on your own, and tell me what you think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carol’s car wouldn’t start, which meant she had to stay up in Cambridge a couple of extra nights. She was supposed to go to a meeting of New Bedford Public Interest, but since she couldn’t, she sent me instead. A little background for those of you who live outside New Bedford: the Fairhaven Mill building […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justice-peace","category-new-bedford-mass"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}