Home Depot’s Building Program Seeks Big Urban Opportunities
In typical tongue-in-cheek style, Home Depot likes to brag that it sells about 100 million gallons of paint each yearenough to cover the surface of Manhattan Island "with one good coat and still have enough left over to touch up the graffiti in the Bronx." That statement appears beside growth statistics on a company brochure decorated with its familiar white and orange, boxed-in logo. Though it may sound imperious to some, the notion of Home Depot painting the town orange is beginning to hit home for urban dwellers, as the mega-retailers construction program branches out from the 1,637 homogenized, "big box" stores sprawled across suburban America.
Hoping to reap profits from young professionals, rental-property owners, rehab do-it-yourselfers and local contractors, the company is moving to build stores with a sexier, new look, using what it calls an "urban neighborhood" prototype, first used in Brooklyn in 2002, Chicago this yearand coming soon to Manhattan.