Not Everyone In Brattleboro Mourns the Loss of Home Depot

(Ambient – Tony chats about people leaving the store empty-handed)

Hinsdale resident Tony Candello watches customers leaving the Brattleboro Home Depot on a recent rainy weekday morning.

Big going-out-of-business signs adorn windows and walls.

Although many people peruse the dwindling inventory, Candello doesn’t see many purchases.

Candello - They’re going in and they’re looking at the prices and the prices still aren’t that good so they’re walking out with nothing in their hands.

The store’s management won’t comment.

They direct all inquiries to Jen King at corporate headquarters in Atlanta.

Jen King - We announced as a company that we were closing 15 underperforming stores and the store in Brattleboro was one of them.

This historic slow down for Home Depot will affect about 1,300 employees in 10 states.

King says the fate of the Brattleboro store reflects a new strategy that sets the bar higher for each location.

Jen King - I think most of the stores we’re closing were in smaller markets where there wasn’t a lot of growth potential.
It’s really hard to pinpoint exactly, like I said, the different factors. Honestly, at the end of the day, the store just wasn’t meeting our targeted returns.

Locally, some Brattleboro residents say loyalty to home grown stores made the difference.

They point to Brattleboro’s flourishing downtown as proof of the priority residents put on keeping things local.

Jeff Lewis is executive director of the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation.

Jeff Lewis - Brattleboro has a particular and interesting confluence of shoppers and buyers and workers and creative people that gives it a flavor that is interesting and valuable and kind of charming, really. It’s a great place to be.

Five years ago community activists vigorously opposed Home Depot’s arrival. They formed a group called Brattpower. While they failed to block Home Depot, they did manage to pass a local ordinance that bans big box retailers.

Tim Stevenson worked with the now-dormant Brattpower.

Stevenson says he feels badly for the displaced workers, but says the Home Depot scenario played out as expected.

Stevenson - For a moment they seem to provide jobs or what have you for some people but then when business isn’t what they want it to be or they want to open a super-size store, they move on and those people that they hired are not taken care of at all, they’re just left behind.

Home Depot’s departure won’t leave Brattleboro without a hardware store.

Right downtown sits Brown and Robert’s Ace Hardware.

While it’s also part of a national chain, it’s locally owned and certainly looks that way.

(ambient sound from Brown’s Hardware)

Customers’ footsteps creak on the old wood floors.

Narrow aisles lead them past towering displays stuffed full of every imaginable hardware item.

Paul Putnam has owned the store with his brothers since the early 1970s.

Back when Home Depot came to town, he was told to expect a 10 to 25 percent drop in sales.

Putnam - We didn’t see that happen our first year and I think it’s due to the fact that the people in this community really care about the community and wanted to shop locally so the first year we were down maybe a percent and a half and we’ve managed to maintain that for the last four years.

Community Development director Jeff Lewis hopes that Home Depot follows through with its promise to relocate some workers to nearby stores in Keene and Greenfield, Massachusetts.

He also worries about the 55,000-square-foot retail hole his organization must now fill.

Lewis appreciates Brattleboro’s devotion to its local businesses.

But he doesn’t support moves to drive out businesses like Home Depot.

Lewis - It’s far more complicated than the sort of headline discussion that tends to go on about that. Simply shopping locally doesn’t necessarily answer economic needs, requirements or create economic value which is what we’re after.

As he works to fill the void Home Depot is leaving, Lewis has no political litmus test for other companies that might want to fill the space.

Lewis - We generally believe that good jobs are good jobs without a lot of respect to who creates or how those jobs are created as long as they’re here and Vermonters are working in them, that’s a good thing.

Brattleboro’s Home Depot is expected to close in a few weeks when its stock is gone.

For NHPR News, this is Kevin Forrest