Home Depot Comes to New York

The Home Depot Inc. (Atlanta) will open its first store in Manhattan today. The multi-level, 105,000-square-foot store at 23rd Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues will be the city’s largest home improvement store.

“Our new Manhattan location is a retail marvel and proof positive that The Home Depot continues to break the mold in how we approach new formats, new markets and new customers,” said chairman, president and ceo Bob Nardelli. “Since 2001, The Home Depot has invested nearly $14 billion in new-store construction, modernization and technology to bring distinction, innovation and convenience to consumers. We look forward to serving this new community and making it easy and affordable for Manhattan residents to express their unique style at home.”

“The Home Depot’s new flagship location in Manhattan was custom built for the borough’s residents, and Manhattanites most certainly will benefit from this first major home improvement retail store,” said New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. “The Home Depot has created more than 300 jobs for New Yorkers — with 300 more to be added when [a] second store opens later this year.” A second store is to open in November or December at 59th Street and Third Avenue.

The $20 million store, in the former Hasbro building, has a doorman, a concierge, an elevator and an atrium. Replacing Home Depot’s familiar big orange box will be an urban-skewed merchandising approach, with mini-refrigerators, closet organizers, plug-in fireplaces, rat-resistant trash cans and roach bombs. The six-foot aisles are wide for Manhattan retailing. And shopping carts will be transported from floor to floor, along with customers, on a Vermaport cart escalator.

It will be the first Home Depot to be dotted with four “know-how kiosks” — flat-panel touch screens that display inventory and that can print out product lists and how-to instructions for customers. The store will also offer so-called “space-solution designers.” They are salesclerks who can customize the store’s products for tight urban spaces. And the new store’s street-floor home-clinic area will administer three tutorials a day, more sessions than in any other of its stores.

Nine high-tech register stations are equipped with wireless scan guns. The store will also have self-checkout lanes and five delivery checkout stations. Delivery will be promised in a designated three-hour window on the same day or the next day.

“The customers in New York are more sophisticated and demanding, so we had to take it up a notch,” said Christine McVeigh, project director of Home Depot’s Manhattan development team.

The new store will offer tool rental with delivery and pick up throughout Manhattan and an expanded key-making and locksmith service. Free how-to clinics will be offered three times each day in a state-of-the-art learning area that includes plasma screens. In addition, kiosks located throughout the store will enable customers to identify projects and print step-by-step instructions and a list of needed project materials.