Home Depot May Get Parker Site for $55 Mil.

IRVINE, CA—Home Depot and Parker Hannifin Corp. have agreed to a deal under which the Atlanta-based home-improvement outfit will acquire the coveted 42-acre Parker Aerospace property here. Preliminary plans call for the construction of an Expo Design Center on a portion of the site and resell the rest to a third party that will develop a business park or incubator project, according to sources knowledgeable with the transaction. Michael Hiemstra, CFO of Cleveland-based Parker Hannifin, says a deal’s in place but won’t say whether Home Depot is the buyer. Home Depot officials won’t comment either.But a source says Home Depot will pay roughly $32 per sf or $55 million. That’s much less than the reported $65 million that incubator start-up eDevelopments.com agreed to pay for the parcel, which is at the corner of Jamboree Road and Interstate 405. That deal fell apart over timing issues.Preliminary plans call for Home Depot to build a 105,000-sf Expo Design Center on 13 acres of the site, with the remaining 29 acres being sold to the unidentified third party. The exact relationship between Home Depot and that third party is not known,although a source says that, as of last week, Home Depot is “in control of all the real estate.”Expo Design Center, a division of Home Depot, operates interior-design stores. The prototypical store consists of 105,000 sf of space featuring kitchen, bath, appliances, lighting and other similar merchandise. Launched in 1991, Expo Design Center currently operates 15 stores nationally, including one in Huntington Beach. Plans call for 200 locations by 2005.Currently, the Parker Aerospace property comprises 400,000 sf of existing manufacturing, industrial and office space, with entitlements in place for an additional 200,000 sf of office construction.