LAKEWOOD : Home Depot Scheduled to Open Store at Mall

Home Depot, the home-improvement chain that closed a North Long Beach store in May, plans to open a store next year on the former site of a Bullock’s store at the Lakewood Center Mall, officials announced recently.

The Atlanta-based chain is planning to build a 130,000-square-foot warehouse store and garden shop, said officials of Santa Monica-based Macerich Company, which owns the mall property.

Demolition of the old Bullock’s store began June 1. Construction of the Home Depot store could begin in November. The new store is scheduled to open in late 1995.

Susan F. Shick, Long Beach’s director of community development, said Home Depot decided to move from the Bixby Knolls Shopping Center because the center could not accommodate the store’s planned expansion. A Vons supermarket is slated to move into the building in a few months and should offset the loss of tax revenue, Shick said.

“That’s why you didn’t hear many groans from the city,” Shick said. “Obviously, we would have loved to have kept Home Depot, but this is a perfect transition.”

George Murchison, the chairman of Long Beach Community Partnership, an advisory group that explores ways to improve the city’s business climate, said Home Depot’s decision shows “a retention process is not in place, at least not in the area of retail. We don’t like to lose any businesses to other communities,” he added.