Home Depot Plans Its Largest Location in Californi
Palo Alto, CA, August 9, 2006--Home Depot is in talks with East Palo Alto to build the biggest Home Depot store in the nation, nearly doubling its space in that city, according to the Palo Alto Daily News.
The newspaper reported that the plan is still in its infancy, and a meeting with city planners is scheduled for sometime in the next two to three weeks, according to Home Depot real estate manager Greg George.
The company would like to take over the vacant 93,000-square-foot EXPO Design Center store next to its existing Home Depot store at 1781 E. Bayshore Road in the Gateway 101 shopping center, renovate the 43-foot-tall building's facade and create a 220,000-square-foot megastore--the biggest Home Depot store in the nation, George said.
The Home Depot store in East Palo Alto has been a "great store for us," George said. "It's beaten and exceeded profit expectations."
The company still needs to receive approval from the Planning Department, Planning Commission and City Council, but would like to open the expanded store Sept. 11, 2008, according to Home Depot plans filed with the city.
The existing store would remain open during construction.
"Right now, the EXPO Design Center site is vacant and that is not positive for (Gateway 101)," East Palo Alto redevelopment director Carlos Martinez said. "It gives the impression that the center is losing strength and that isn't the case.
"The center (Gateway 101) is doing extremely well," Martinez said later. "Perhaps 90 percent of our sales tax revenue comes from that center. If it wasn't for the Gateway 101, this city would not ... be financially feasible."
George said the proposed store expansion in East Palo Alto would be a "unique concept" for the company simply due to its size, dwarfing the average 100,000- to 120,000-square-foot Home Depot store in the area.
The EXPO Design Center in East Palo Alto sold high-end luxury fixtures and was one of 15 such stores that Home Depot closed last year as the company changed its business focus.
The proposed store would take on much of the old EXPO's product line, George said.
Home Depot runs 34 EXPO Design Centers in the United States, with local stores in San Carlos, San Jose, Sunnyvale, Oakland and Dublin.
The 30-acre Gateway 101 shopping center generates more than $2 million in sales tax revenue annually for the city and employs about 800 people -- a third of whom live in East Palo Alto.
The shopping center was once home to a vacant high school. It was seized by the city and redeveloped in 1993.
The CompUSA store at the Gateway 101 shopping center closed and is being replaced by a Circuit City, Martinez said.
