Whittling down Depot

Homeowners want big-box hardware retailer to scale back plans for southeast Huntington store.There’s rarely any action at the design review board.

Anyone looking for fireworks at City Hall ought to avoid this drab committee. Tucked into a small conference room beneath City Hall, most meetings pit planning staff against developers, stuck in aesthetic arguments over fence lattice or stucco texture. No one goes and even fewer care.

But on Thursday, about 15 people packed into the first meeting in the city’s newest development battle: the proposed Home Depot store in southeast Huntington Beach.

Nearby residents like Kathy Kliengenberg have vowed to follow every phase of the project, set to transform the vacant Kmart building at the corner of Garfield Avenue and Magnolia Street into a 126,000-square-foot home and garden center. City officials are trying to scale back the plan to accommodate neighbors worried about noise at the site.

Thursday’s meeting provided a rare glimpse into negotiations over the project, set to go back behind closed doors before eventually making its way into a hearing -- perhaps explaining why the project has been dragging along since it first went public nearly a year ago.

Most vocal in the debate are the neighbors living behind Home Depot on Lindsay Lane. Many say that a proposed delivery route behind the building -- roughly 12 trucks a day -- would be noisy and disruptive. Deliveries at the store could run from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Planning Department staff agree and are recommending reorienting the deliveries to the front of the building. Home Depot argues that closing off the back of the building would eliminate 86 parking spots needed to meet the city’s parking code for a business its size.

If that’s the case, then Home Depot should shrink the size of their building so they don’t need those additional spaces, planner Ron Santos said. That could mean trimming off 17,000 square feet.

Company officials are not happy with the solution. When asked whether they were willing to cut the size of the store, company representative Marice White said, “Right now the answer would be no. Every square foot off the building makes it more difficult to operate.”

For now, the project will go back to the bargaining table and eventually end up in front of one of the city’s zoning administrators, although it seems inevitable that the project is headed for an appeal at the planning commission. It only takes one commissioner to appeal the zoning administrator’s decision and bring it before the seven-member commission, known for forcibly scaling down projects.

Planning Commissioner Bob Dingwall recently appealed the Target project’s delivery route out of concerns for the neighbors living at the intersection of Brookhurst Street and Adams Avenue. Commissioner Tom Livengood also has said he has concerns about the delivery route.

“The design that [Home Depot] has right now is a real challenge,” he said. “We want a solution that will allow Home Depot to open and that the homeowners can accept.”

In the meantime, Home Depot officials are stacking up their own allies. Neighboring bar owner Greg Coleman has been a vocal proponent of the project, arguing that the vacant Kmart site attracts youngsters and graffiti and is becoming a security problem.

Councilman Keith Bohr has also expressed support for the project, arguing it would be a financial boon for the city.

“I think there will be a Home Depot there,” he said. “Do we need to take two years to do it because someone thinks that if we stall it long enough, it will go away?”

Bohr said he has less sympathy for the neighbors behind the proposed site because another retail chain had operated there for years. He said stalling the project will only cost the city money.

“Eventually, when it’s all built and done, it’s a year of sales tax we didn’t get,” he said.

The Home Depot is expected to generate nearly $500,000 in annual sales tax revenue, White said. Many residents in the south part of town shop at the Costa Mesa Home Depot instead of the one on Warner Avenue in Huntington Beach, she said.

White said she hoped a compromise could be reached.

“Home Depot needs to have an approval that serves their customers, meets the demands of the marketplace and ultimately is a successful store,” she said.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

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