Guest Editorial: Sullivan Hardware Threats Against City And Neighbor Remonstrators

The following is an editorial offered by neighborhood activist Clark Kahlo in response to sharp media and community reaction against the successful remonstrance of neighbor activists to a zoning variance requested by Sullivan Hardware's:

Following the Board of Zoning Appeal's December 16th unanimous vote to deny its four requested variances, Sullivan Hardware immediately threatened to close its retail operation at 49th and Pennsylvania. There was also a threat to move the Do It Best Corporation's bi-annual convention away from Indianapolis.

These are bogus threats to the community in response to the BZA's denial of variances. They're intended to pressure elected city officials and to leverage public-sector appeasements.

Regarding the threat to close his store, Sullivan profits from a strong customer base of both contractors serving the residential neighborhood and from nearby residents. They enjoy the convenience of easy access for hardware and landscape goods. Sullivan's site needs were readily accommodated by the City in 1994 when he received variances to build the store. Later, In 2009, Sullivan sought and received additional variances to build a greenhouse along with additional parking variances. Sullivan operates on a site which has worked well for them for 20 years with the aid of the City's and the BZA's two previous sets of variance approvals.

Regarding the claim that the Ft. Wayne based Do It Best Corporation is "so irritated by the city's ruling that it is considering moving its bi-annual retailers convention away from Indianapolis" (a claim in a supporter's broadcast email), this is news to company officials. Actually, its official corporate response is that: "this is a local matter between Pat Sullivan and the City of Indianapolis" (email from a Do It Best communications officer).

As the credibility of its two threats against the City and community continues to erode via proof-to-the-contrary, the Sullivan Hardware camp still has its "mob mentality" to apply against the individual remonstrators and, to a lesser extent, the BZA. Following the BZA's denial, Sullivan's angry, but uninformed, supporters unleashed a cascade of personal attacks on the several remonstrators via the social media and comment websites. Several news organizations (WTHR-13, Indianapolis Star, WIBC) fanned the flames with stunningly one-sided "news reports" and commentary. As for the BZA, which actually denied the variances, and the city's professional planning staff which recommended denial on 3 of the 4 variance requests, the pro-Sullivan mob and the media weren't nearly as condemning or insulting.

Sullivan Hardware also intimated that it might appeal the BZA's decision in court. However, this remains a remote possibility -- in effect, another empty threat -- because Sullivan knows that it has no substantive case in either the facts or the law (even in our legal system which heavily favors property and commerce over the interests of people, communities, and nature).

It's not rare for developers and business operators to make personal threats against neighborhood remonstrators. We saw this last year when the Browning-Sheehan group sued two remonstrators for opposing its massive project which would redevelop several tracts in Broad Ripple with a Whole Foods grocery and residential units. Their claimed damages, allegedly resulting from appeal litigation delay, were claimed to be in excess of $1 million. Their claim and lawsuit went nowhere because they had no legal merit. The developers' attorneys knew the law and their suit was intended only to intimidate and punish. These kinds of lawsuits are generally called SLAPP suits-- Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. Indiana law does not favor them. (Whole Foods has withdrawn its intent -- reported by others, but never confirmed by the company -- to put a store in Broad Ripple. That plan was likely a ruse from the start and intended only to help the developers sell the project to the public and to the Metropolitan Development Commission)

Another bullying tactic is to chill neighbor remonstrance by sending a threatening personal letter, as Patachou's Martha Hoover did in 2009 when she sought variances for her new and expanded restaurants at 49th and Pennsylvania. In her letter, Ms. Hoover ominously warned a near-neighbor that she was an attorney and former deputy prosecutor, and demanded that they cease their remonstrance against her variance petition.

Former Nuvo Newsweekly editor Harrison Uhlmann wrote an accompanying essay for former mayor Bill Hudnut's 1995 book The Hudnut Years: 1976 to 1981. He noted that Hudnut was mayor of "a city that has no tradition or talent for public debate. Once the leaders of the community set a priority or start an initiative, the opposition is expected to retire in silence." Fortunately, public participation, including the statutory right of zoning remonstrance, remains a protected part of our democracy, albeit one increasingly weakened by the juggernaut Corporate State. However, neighborhood remonstrators are still subject to threat, intimidation, and personal attack by commercial interests and their friends.

As we've seen in the Sullivan Hardware variance petition, on the relatively rare occasions when insatiable commercial interests are successfully resisted by neighbors via the long-established zoning review process, those interests can become irate, cry foul, and harangue elected officials in private meetings with threats to close stores, pull conventions, and anything else they can think of to gain private advantage at the expense of the public.