Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

Home Depot to fuel
Maui hardware wars

By Peter Wagner
Star-Bulletin

Home Depot Inc., which has dropped plans for a store in Hawaii Kai, announced plans today for a Kahului outlet next to another home improvement giant -- Lowe's.

The 150,500-square-foot store, to include 130,500 square feet of retail space and a 20,000-square-foot garden center, is scheduled to open in Spring and be the company's third Hawaii outlet.

"Maui will be a great place to do business since it is a growing community where the consumers are becoming more home improvement savvy," said Jim Lloyd, real estate manager at Home Depot.

The store, on 12.7 acres in Alexander & Baldwin Inc.'s Maui Business Park, will create 150 to 180 full-time jobs, Lloyd said. Local contractor Nordic Construction will build the store.

The prospect of another cavernous competitor is bad news for smaller retailers like Marmac Ace Hardware on Alamaha Place, just around the corner from the planned Home Depot. "We're just going to keep doing what we're doing," said David Marrs, who's family has been operating the 15,000-square-foot hardware store at the same location for almost 30 years. "It's service, service service."

Marrs, whose grandfather Joe McCurdy opened Marmac in 1972, said he hopes to hold onto a loyal customer base. But he's apprehensive about Home Depot and its inventory of 50,000 products. "Sure we're worried," he said. "We're worried about our employees.

Marrs said the company was able to withstand the opening of Lowe's -- formerly Eagle Hardware -- in Kahului several years ago. Despite an initial loss of more than 35 percent in sales, Marmac held onto its 24 employees and has since recouped about 25 percent of the lost sales volume. "We make a deposit every single day to Bank of Hawaii," Marrs said. "Our money stays here on Maui."

Atlanta-based Home Depot, the nation's "big box" hardware and home furnishings retailer, opened a 145,000 square-foot store in Iwilei last September and recently began construction of a second store in Pearl City. The Pearl City store is to open next summer. The firm yesterday confirmed it had dropped its controversial plans for a store in Hawaii Kai strongly opposed by the area's neighborhood board. The property, at Kuapa Peninsula, is zoned for residential development.