A Home Depot developer in Trumbull, Connecticut sued another developer who had approval to build a Lowe’s across the street. This week, the Lowe’s developer backed off his plan, and announced that the Lowe’s had been dropped. According to the Connecticut Post, the big box home-improvement battle is over. Developer Phil DiGennaro announced this week that his project on the Monroe Turnpike will be a “more traditional shopping center,” minus the Lowe’s. DiGennaro had filed plans to build a Lowe’s, but another developer, Old Mine Associates, then applied to build a Home Depot across from DiGennaro’s site. When DiGennaro received approval from the Planning and Zoning Commission, Old Mine Associates filed a court appeal, which was apparently enough to intimidate DiGennaro to dump the 138,000 s.f. Lowe’s. “I want to do what works best for Trumbull,” DiGennaro said. Old Mine Associates, which has now succeeded in eliminating the competition, is still not home free, because of traffic concerns over his Home Depot. Old Mine wants to build a 105,000-s.f. Home Depot and a 17,000-s.f. retail building on the 18-acre site. Rather than look like the typical big box with an orange stripe, Old Mine has agreed to make the store fa??ade have more of a reddish, colonial exterior.
We don’t often hear of cases where one developer sues another to chase off the competition, and since 75% of Lowe’s stores are located near Home Depot, the chances of this happening are fairly unusual. It would be helpful if we could get developers to sue each other more often, because it cuts down on the amount of work that citizen’s groups have to do.
