Warrenton Home Depot opens for business

Published 5:00 pm Sunday, August 31, 2008

Shoppers are thinking inside the big box in Warrenton these days, with the opening of the new Home Depot store. The store opened for the first time on Mon., Aug. 18th.

The national retailer held its grand opening Wednesday, Aug. 20, when the store was so busy it was hard to find a parking space.

Lori Sarancik is the store manager. She said the 103,000 sq. ft. building now holds several million dollars in inventory. The garden department occupies another 28,000 sq. ft. Getting the store ready to go has taken a good part of the summer.

“We started stocking the shelves on June 23,” she said.

Home Depot’s Warrenton store employs about 100 people, 20 of whom are transfers from elsewhere in the company. The rest are local hires.

“We have a terrific group of people,” Sarancik said. “Retired and active Coast Guard; flooring experts; local designers and retailers; lots of local talent.”

She said the Warrenton store differs from other Home Depots elsewhere in that it has products tailored specifically to coastal climate and design needs.

“We’ve added an expanded assortment of stainless steel fasteners [which resist rust],” Sarancik said. “We also have marine plywood and vinyl exterior lighting.”

Sarancik said the store also features a coastal line of expanded color palettes and special merchandise in the bath department including “vessel” sinks that evoke a nautical feel.

“You’ll never see anything like that in other Home Depot stores,” she said.

The Warrenton Home Depot will likely replace the Longview store in the hearts of customers who used to make the trek inland to shop. Sarancik said the company plans carefully in deciding where to open a new store.

“They gather data by zip code [from shoppers],” she said, adding that the Longview store draws many of its customers from the I-5 corridor in that area. “It [the Warrenton store] will probably have a small amount of impact in Longview.”

Home Depot also took the opportunity during the grand opening ceremony to present company donation checks to two local organizations: Clatsop Community Action and Clatsop CASA. Sarancik said the company typically makes such donations to local groups.

“We often pick something like a playground or a community center that needs to be done,” she said.

Donations can also be in the form of building materials.

Sarancik has been with Home Depot for 20 years, and before being promoted to Warrenton store manager had worked at the company’s Chehalis location, which sustained severe flooding damage in the December 2007 storm.

“We had water 20 inches high inside the store,” she said.

Over her career with Home Depot, Sarancik has been a hardware buyer and operations manager.

Home Depot in Warrenton is located at 1650 SE Ensign Lane, near the intersection of Dolphin Avenue and Highway 101. Store hours are 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. in the summer. In the winter the store will open at 7 a.m.