WHO’S BEHIND THE PLAN TO BUILD A HOME DEPOT ON THE WETLANDS?

Just to underscore a point that might go otherwise unnoticed, here’s the last line in Dave Wielenga’s fast-break story on the Home Depot project:

“Chris Pook has been retained by Home Depot to promote the project.”

Thanks to Dave, longtime District Weekly readers are already familiar with Pook’s questionable relationship to city government–he once wrote that Pook “is so enmeshed in city affairs that he often operates as a quasi-governmental official.” Judge the evidence for yourself in Dave’s previous stories (like this one on the Sea Festival).

But Pook has his supporters.

Consider this 2001 story in which a writer promoting Pook’s candidacy for CEO of CART, an international car-racing organization, said, “The more I dig, the more Pook keeps coming up smelling like a rose.”

Pook took over CART when it was in deep trouble, and some observers saw Pook just as Pook saw himself: a savior. Two years later, the organization was on the verge on insolvency, and many who had been his biggest fans echoed the poster on a fan site who wrote, “I praised and championed him more than most in the beginning. Just add him to an ever growing list of people that have hosed us.”

It’s a small bit of history that seems, well, fractal.

Tags: car racing, CART, Chris Pook, Dave Wielenga, home depot, Long Beach, preservation, wetlands