Atlanta, GA, June 25--Home improvement retailer Home Depot plans to add 31 stores in the U.S. Northeast this year, and is studying plans for its first store in New York's Manhattan borough, a store executive said on Tuesday.
"The Northeast is definitely a key focus," said Tom Taylor, president of Home Depot's Eastern division, the retailer's largest store unit with over 600 stores stretching from Maine to Puerto Rico.
Home Depot has about 300 stores in the area it identifies as the Northeast, extending north of Fredericksburg, Virginia, to Maine. It has 76 stores in New York state.
Taylor said Home Depot has identified potential locations for a Manhattan store.
"We're looking at Manhattan for the first time in a long time," he said.
Home Depot has not formally announced plans to open or build in Manhattan, which can be a difficult market to enter because of space limitations and higher costs.
Taylor, 37, said a Manhattan store might not necessarily resemble the two-level urban store that Home Depot recently opened in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood, but would likely differ from its traditional "big-box," or warehouse-style stores.
"We've got opportunities where we may not have 22 acres (8.8 hectares), but you'd be able to get a big enough building on one floor," said Taylor, who started at Home Depot as a teen-ager and worked in Florida, Washington and Texas before taking charge of the retailer's Eastern division.
Home Depot has been testing alternative store formats such as urban stores and landscape stores to reach new customers as rival Lowe's Cos. expands to large U.S. markets.
Last year, Lowe's said it plans to add more than 60 stores in the greater New York area over the next several years.
Taylor said Home Depot does not break out sales for the urban stores, but that it was "pleased" with the performance of its first urban store in Brooklyn's Mill Basin area, which opened last year.
Lowe's is also opening smaller stores that measure 94,000 square feet (8,460 sq. metres), compared with its typical warehouses that are 130,000 square feet (11,700 sq. meters). The new Lowe's stores are designed for smaller, more rural markets, as opposed to urban locations.
