Home Depot Buying 42-Acre Irvine Property

Home Depot Inc., moving quickly to expand its home design showrooms, has agreed to buy a 42-acre Irvine site; it will use part of the property and may develop the rest for other retail stores or office uses.

The giant home-improvement chain is buying the aerospace headquarters of Parker Hannifin Corp., which is moving its 500 employees into other Orange County offices it occupies.

Neither Home Depot nor Parker Hannifin would comment, but real estate sources said the sale is in escrow and should close in September.

The site, off the San Diego Freeway and Jamboree Road with an estimated value of $58 million, would fit into the retailer’s plans for locating its showrooms in affluent areas.

The company has opened Expo Design Centers this month in San Diego, Monrovia and Huntington Beach, and is planning another in Laguna Niguel, real estate brokers said.

“Home Depot is looking to be in higher-end areas,” said Ian Brown, a retail broker at Grubb & Ellis Inc. “You can’t do much better than the border of Newport Beach and Irvine.”

The Atlanta-based company, which opened its 1,000th store this week, continues to expand aggressively in California, where it has 126 stores. Five more stores are scheduled to open in the state within the next three months.

The chain has more than doubled its locations since 1997, thanks to a robust economy and a runaway housing market.