Home Depot, Hillwood Tie Knot for Import Distribution Center

Within 30 days, the home improvement giant will start trucking in inventory from the Port of Houston to Gateway 53 at 501 Henrietta Creek Rd. in the Roanoke section of AllianceTexas. Home Depot, which imports products from more than 40 countries, has eight US distribution centers ranging from 750,000 sf to 1.4 million sf. The Dallas/Fort Worth center is one of several on the drawing board to accommodate the growth of direct imports.

"This is a new piece of business and we are happy to have it," Hillwood's Bob Alter says. The long-term lease was six months in the making, with Hillwood catching an early lead by tailoring an under-construction spec building to the heavyweight's known must-haves. "There was an early long list of competitors," Alter tells GlobeSt.com, "but we were able to get ahead of the curve because we were under construction with the right kind of building."

After an indemnified agreement was inked, Hillwood dug into additional modifications at the Gateway North property. "It was quite awhile before a lease was signed," Alter says.

To score the win, Hillwood boosted the dock door count to 98 and added an adjacent six-acre parking lot for 130 trailers to go along with the 125 spaces built into the project. The import distribution center should be pushing full throttle by September. Should it need more warehouse space, Home Depot can take down another 287,240 sf in the 1.3-million-sf Gateway 50 at 743 Henrietta Creek Rd., predominately leased to the Houston-based Randall's Food & Drugs Inc. for its Tom Thumb grocery store inventories.

The Atlanta-based Home Depot operates two other distribution centers in Dallas/Fort Worth, one for lumber and one for domestic distribution. The world's leading home improvement chain became the 56th corporate banner from the Fortune 500, Global 500 or Forbes List of Private Companies to fly over the 15,000-acre AllianceTexas.

Home Depot was represented by its longstanding powerbroker, Tony Kepano with Trammell Crow Co.'s Atlanta office and Ryan Keiser, part of TCC's Dallas team. Hillwood's bargaining was handled in-house by Alter and Tony Creme.