VOICES

Thinking Out of the Box

Would you want a permanent, 40-foot long, 10-foot high industrial shipping container next to your home or across the street from your home? The Methodist Church on 53rd St. S. has proposed exactly that on their 28th Ave. parking lot located along the entire side of our home to grow pea sprouts to feed the hungry.

We support multiple missions to feed the hungry. But a 40-foot industrial box in a residential neighborhood to house this project does not respect and preserve the character of our community.

Like our neighbors, we moved here because we love the art, the diversity, the restaurants, shops and the quirkiness of Gulfport. We saved all our lives to invest in our homes. This shipping container will decrease all of our property values and quality of life.

Our elected officials have worked hard to make our village attractive and inviting. This shipping container will be located on a major entry point to Gulfport. If we open our village to these enormous commercial boxes, how will it impact our businesses? Will snowbirds and locals still come to dine in our new industrial complex?

We offered to help the church find a commercial location for the shipping container and set up a community garden in the parking lot. They’re not interested and plan to expand in the future. More shipping containers?

If the church is granted a permit variance to place a 40-foot industrial box within 12 feet of our home, will the next one show up on a vacant lot next to or across the street from your home? In your neighbor’s yard? On the beach? The permit isn’t based on its intended use. It might be a mega storage shed, like the ones in commercial locations on 34th Street.

And, the permit doesn’t enforce any aesthetic standards. The next approved shipping container can be a rusty, bright orange, hulking piece of dented metal dropped in your neighborhood.

Let’s tell our elected officials we want them to deny this variance, to respect and preserve the character of our cherished Gulfport neighborhoods.

Sue Lloyd-Davies & Ken Beaudoin (property owners) and Patty Grace, Michael Grace, Sue Brewer, Karen Schroeder, Eric Levitt, Susan Levitt, Jerry O’Regan, Terri Sherony, Rich Sherony, Leslie Gray, Deborah Meteraud

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