Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Farewell Design Center

Whether it was the right concept at the wrong time or simply the wrong concept to begin with, the Home Depot Design Center underneath Target at midtown is shutting down. Home Depot spent a lot of money over the years to train me on what a Home Depot store is. I'm just stupid enough that if you tag "Design Center" on the end of it, I still kind of expect a hardware store inside. That's not what I found. What I found I liked, but it wasn't a Home Depot.

At least I figured out a positive aspect of the choice developers made to emphasize parking over retail at the Home Depot/Target site: Now that the Design Center concept is dead, we're not stuck with a massive empty big box store at that corner. Because the store is so well hidden, it's vacancy will be hard to notice.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

So- what do we think will go in there next?

I agree with the parking deck comments. For a parking deck it doesn't look bad at all. Or maybe I'm still just giddy about having a Target there instead of heading for Pineville.

How about splitting up the space and throwing in a Borders along with a Bed Bath Beyond??

John McBride said...

Either one of those would be good. Actually, almost anything would be good, considering that we're not likely to get much of anything anytime soon given the current economic climate.

Anonymous said...

I thought it was a decent concept...a compromise between a traditional nuts and bolts Home Depot and a high end design center like HD Expo.

Anonymous said...

OK Whole foods, the space is there now....

John McBride said...

Excellent thought Nick.