How To Nail Home Depot

from Merchant Magazine - February 2000

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By Al Norman, author, Slant-Dunking Wal-Mart: How You Can Stop Superstore Sprawl in Your Hometown

fN 1996, Home Depot opened a new store once every 4 ldays. By 1999, Home Depot claimed it would cut a ribbon every two days.

Now controlling more than l5%o of the $200 billion home improvement market in America, Depot chairman Bernie Marcus says, "There are markets in the U.S. that are so badly undersaturated that they will need to have lots of Home Depots." By October 1999, the store count was up to 866. The chain now boasts it will more than double its stores to 1,900 over the next four years.

It ain't gonna happen.

The main thing that stands in their way is not stock performance, housing starts or what their competitors do. It's organized citizen opposition. All it takes today is the orange shadow of a Home Depot to fall across a community, and the organizing begins. It's happening in North Miami, Fl. It's happening in Santa Cruz, Ca. Depot bashing is taking place from Roanoke, Va., to White Bear Lake, Mn., from San Francisco and San Juan Capistrano, Ca., to Tucson, Az. Citizens are saying: "Hometowns, Not Home Depot."

What used to be a 90-day permitting process can now take one or two years-even longer. Every time Home Depot delays a store opening for one year, that's $51 million in lost revenues to the company. Marcus tries to shrug it off: "Now when we're opening 130 stores and you hear about (protests) in five or ten, you'd say, 'Well, my God, this is quite awful.' But it's not, it's about the same as it was before." It's not the same, it's getting worse.

Community opposition to Home Depot has escalated over the past six years because citizens now see the economic and social damage that big box retail can cause at the neighborhood level. "You want the nicest neighborhood in North Miami cluttered with this garbage?" asked one opponent.

Like-minded residents have formed do-it-yourself coalitions to defeat Depot. They need only four tools to succeed: (1) a broad-based citizen's group, (2) a land use attorney, (3) constant visibility in the media, and (4) money to pay fbr the first three.

Merchants and others in the industry often try to keep a low-profile in such campaigns, hoping the citizens will succeed, but doing little to make it happen. Here are three ways for local businesses to help ensure that hometowns win over Home Depot:

(l) Be Preemptive. Communities such as Tucson, Santa Cruz and others are updating their zoning ordinances to make it harder for big box retailers to overwhelm smaller businesses. Some consultants tell hardware stores how to hide in a niche once Home Depot arrives. But the competition to survive begins before Depot arrives, and zoning amendments like size caps, special permits or regional economic impact reviews are much more effective in winning the battle early, rather than finding some obscure corner to hide in.

Begin now to renovate your city or town zoning codeeven if you already have a Home Depot in your ( Please turn to next page)

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