Home Depot creates urban model store

Portland, Oregon, well known for its urban growth boundary and transit villages, may get the nation’s first Home Depot designed to fit into a Main Street setting. The 166,000 sq. ft. Halsey Place project represents a radical step for the nation’s third largest retailer and big box stores in general. With the help of new urbanist architects Lennertz Coyle & Associates, the home improvement chain has designed a building that looks nothing like a typical Home Depot. Designed to fit on the four-acre site, Halsey Place is a mixed-use, four-story building. Halsey Street, the main thoroughfare, will be fronted with a traditional streetscape of ground floor retail stores, offices on the second floor, and 26 apartments on the third and fourth floors. Largely hidden by these uses will be the bulk of a 104,000 sq. ft. Home Depot with two levels of structured parking above. Halsey Place is a sophisticated response by a major retailer to existing new urbanist design guidelines. Several years ago, Lennertz Coyle created a plan to steer growth in the neighborhood. Halsey Place represents a test of how a retail giant can adapt to one of a growing number of new urbanist strategic plans nationwide. In the interest of fitting into an urban site, Home Depot is making a foray into property management. The retailer will own the entire building and lease out the retail, office, and residential space. The site is within the Hollywood/Sandy Boulevard section of Portland, an older part of the city which is substantially built and features historic bungalow neighborhoods. There’s no place for the typical 15-acre Home Depot in the neighborhood, yet the demographics suggest it would be a good business location. The retailer sees the potential of locating in similar urban neighborhoods nationwide. “Home Depot is looking at Halsey Place as an opportunity to develop a new urban model that’s mixed use and fits the urban communities where the company would like to locate,” says Michael Sievers, spokesman for Halsey Place. Architect Bill Lennertz explains that Home Depot is at the forefront of a trend bringing national retailers back into cities. “A lot of people are moving out of the suburbs back into the city, so the stores are following the money,” he told the Portland Tribune. While still fairly large, the store would be smaller than typical Home Depots, which are in the 135,000 to 140,000 square foot range. The store’s garden center, which will function as one of the retail storefronts, will be substantially smaller than usual and will be geared more to indoor plants to serve the urban market, Sievers says. The Home Depot project fits in well with the Hollywood/Sandy Boulevard plan, according to city officials. Nevertheless it has generated significant opposition from residents who fear additional traffic and a drop in their real estate values. The site is zoned for high-density use — so an increase in traffic with development of the site is inevitable. Lennertz contends that bringing in a large retailer like Home Depot, with appropriate building design, will help local merchants and be an asset to the community. Final plans will be submitted in May, 2001, Sievers says.