Home Depot To Start Work On Local Store

Home Depot, the Wal-Mart of the home improvement business, will open its first Eastern Washington store in October in the Spokane Valley.

Construction will begin next week on a 105,704-square-foot store at the corner of Sprague and Fancher, with an accompanying 24,103-square-foot garden center.

About 150 people will be hired, primarily from the Spokane area, a spokesperson for the Atlanta, Ga.-based company said.

Though this is the first store in the Spokane area, Home Depot has 10 other stores in Washington state, including in Seattle, Tacoma, Federal Way, Puyallup, Olympia, Bothell and Everett.

Home Depot still is scouting the Spokane area for a second store, most likely on the city’s North Side. “The company is continuing to look for a site that’s compatible for them,” a company spokesperson said.

Two Spokane companies have been selected for work on the 33-acre site.

Taylor Engineering is the project’s civil engineer, and Waynco Construction did site preparation work. The project’s general contractor is CSI Co., of Colorado Springs, Colo., and the architect is Greenberg/Farrow Architects of Irvine, Calif.

Home Depot applied for and received a zone change for the site in September 1995. Spokane County’s hearing examiner committee changed the zoning from heavy industrial use to regional business use.

Home Depot is the country’s largest home improvement retailer, with sales of more than $15 billion in 1995, up from $12 billion in 1994. The company operates 446 stores in the United States and Canada.

, DataTimes