Historic Old Northeast Neighborhood Association

To: Page 568 - Again

Sooooo, since most of the Stop CVS'ers have either gone away or have been ordered not to write in on this web site anymore, I guess I'll just have to write in this big vacuum of cyberspace, pert near, all by myself.

Lets see, who used to be out front and are now gone from the scene. Well, Jim and Kathy Martin have vanished. Mark Woodley is left for the hinter regions.(Rumor has it that he is actually all tied up dealing with the codes people on one of his buildings. Seems Mr. Woodley was found to be performing construction on one of his buildings in North Shore without a building permit. In laymans terms, he was practicing construction without a license. That is serious stuff if found to be true. Soooooo, I sez to Arlene B. at the board meeting on Monday night, say this ain't true!!!!! ---------And, before you Stop CVS'ers go jumping down my throat on this one, my source of information was Arlene. You see she was giving her codes committee, er, codes person report to the board.)

There are others that were out there to stop CVS from coming into our neighborhood. They are now back at home weeding and painting or whatever.

I hope that what they learned throughout this whole ordeal is this.

You can not stop a ligitimate business from ''applying'' to rezone or request a special exception use if the zoning ordinance allows for it. You can not stop the use of land by a business if it conforms to the adjacent land uses and is compatible with its surroundings. You can not drive a business away simply because you don't want it there. The process simply does not work that way. I tried to explain this to the Stop CVS'ers in the early beginnings of this whole ugly affair but they did not want to listen to me or to the others sharing the same information. We were wrong. We were in the temporary minority. They were right. They were in the temporary majority. Well the process they went through, right up to Wednesdays vote to approve the CVS site plan, hopefully has taught them all a valuable lesson in zoning/landuse/governmental regulation and business.

Hopefully, no group like this will ever pop up again in North Shore or anywhere else in St. Pete for that matter. It is counter productive to all. What folks need to do who want to participate is to read the ordinances, get educated to the real facts of the application and get involved in constructive ways. Placing STOP signs in front yards is not the way. Agreeing to sit down to discuss the project to make it as good as it can be and to insure that the applicant follows every letter of the law, etc., is the proper way. This is what I and many others who have participated on the NDR committee, Planning committee and the board itself, have done for the last nine years or so. This is the tried and true process that has worked with the Amoco Gas station, Bob Lee's, Lenny and Vinnys, Lasting Impressions, etc. etc. This is a process that works. Never in our recent past, since North Shore has had an NDR committee and its Neighborhood Plan, has such a fiasco occurred.

Soooo, there you are Mr. or Mrs. 568. Another article for you to have at.






By Steven D. Lange

did learn

Oh, we did learn. We sat down and reached a good compromise without your help and despite your tactics to try to push a monster forward. You can't figure out that nobody was ''anti'' anything except scale and design and massed / boxed encroachment.
''You didn't deliver'', we did !

By ''anti'' CVS

To: Did Learn

Well, I am glad that you finally learned what the NDR process is all about. I have been applying and enforcing our NDR Ordinance and tenents of the North Shore Neighborhood Plan to North Shore and for North Shore, continuously, for about nine years, for free I might add (in regard to NDR), while you anonymously sat on your couch.

I do not remember being told that little miss ''anti-CVS'' was one of the five North Shore members who were selected to sit down and hammer out the last details of the CVS site plan. Did I miss your name on that roster?

Last time I checked my memory banks, you and your followers did everything you could possibly do to stop CVS. Your yard signs projected STOP CVS. Your meetings called for ''we don't want no stinking CVS in our neighborhood. We want Watson's and those other five buildings''. You used the argument that those buildings were historic. They are not. You argued that traffic would
kill the neighborhood. It ended up being one more car up eighth and three more cars out ninth ave. as the total diferential change in traffic. Even with two independent traffic studies saying basically the same thing, still your group argued that it would kill that part of the neighborhood. Your side argued that the CVS building was grossly out of scale. And when that it was not was shown to you your side still argued that it was.

Your side voted to deny the rezoning at the planning commission. When you lost there you reorganized and went to the City Coucil second public hearing on the rezoning issue and again tried to have the zoning killed. Not modified. Killed. (remember the Stop CVS booklet that Jim Martin proudly held up for all to see that thirteen Stop CVS people had worked on for over a month to produce, and that this document was denounced by the City Council chairwoman as being full of mistruths)

And for our web site readers I will expain. If you deny the rezoning you kill the project. And that was the goal of Stop CVS!!!!

I was the one at the podium, not you guys, not even CVS at that moment in time, that was promoting the zoning change but only back to 150'.

Sooooo, listen sister, your feeble attempt to now say that the Stop CVS group always wanted CVS and were just trying to make it a better project all along is a bunch of you know what.

You say I did not deliver. Well, what has finally been approved by the North Shore NDR committee this week is EXACTLY what I envisioned from May 8, at the NSNA board meeting, when CVS first submitted their plan. I knew then as I now know now that this project should be built and could be built and would be built.

Your attempt to re-write recent history and convince us all now that you all were for CVS from the start is a joke. It is as funny as Jim Martin standing up in front of the June 19th NSNA general membership meeting and telling everyone that the votes at the Planning Commission and the City Council which approved the CVS rezoning was a vistory for Stop CVS group/movement. Come on!!

As far as pushing a monster forward, could you be a little more specific before a write back on that one. Thanks.


By Steven D. Lange