We read:
"Tom McKenna is a longtime Stuart businessman who speaks only English. He says that's why he's being kicked out of the storefront on South Dixie Highway where he has run Seacoast Water Care for seven years. "I don't know how else to put it," said McKenna, 51. I'm not sure I do either.
On July 5 - the day after Independence Day - McKenna received a letter from landlord Ivan Munroe telling him to consider another location. Munroe said in his letter he wants to have "quality tenants serving the Spanish need in the area." "I guess I don't serve the 'Spanish need,' whatever that means," McKenna said. "I have plenty of Spanish-speaking workers come in here to buy water for their landscaping crews," he said. "And people in the neighborhood use the vending machines out front to fill their water bottles for their homes." .....
Munroe is a private business owner, and he can do anything he wants with his property including fulfill his "vision." But there's a double standard, and I don't think Munroe is a villain as much as he's the symptom of a bigger societal ill: Try telling a minority business owner to leave so you can bring in a quality tenant to serve the need of the English-speaking population.
You'd have activists organizing protests so quickly it'd make the annual snowbird migration seem slow. McKenna said it's going to cost between $10,000 and $15,000 to move - assuming he can even find another storefront in 30 days. And he knows he's going to lose some of the customers he's served for seven years.
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