“When they don’t want you, they don’t want you.” That was the succinct comment from Home Depot’s site development manager after the Brookfield, WI Town Board disposed of a Home Depot application in what has to be record time. It took the Town Board less than five minutes to turn down Home Depot’s request to rezone property off Blue Mound Road. The rezoning was necessary to move forward plans to construct a 112,000 s.f. Home Depot store. This was the second setback in less than a week for Home Depot, following a Court ruling in Waukesha, WI rejecting a store there. Last February, the Brookfield Planning Commission recommended that Town Board reject the rezoning request because of traffic concerns. Home Depot summoned up a new traffic study to allay town concerns, but the Town Board wanted none of it. The Home Depot study reportedly said that traffic would increase no more than 1% or 2%, which is about as likely to happen as a rainshower of ten penny nails. The local press simply reported that Home Depot’s efforts to locate in the Brookfield/Waukesha market had “run into speed bumps”. More like a dead end. “Home Depot, Inc. has the misfortune of being homeless in the Brookfield-Waukesha market,” wrote the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “It was a deaf ear,” bemoaned Home Depot’s development manager. Like the man said: when they don’t want you….
Learn the words to the new Home Depot theme song: “I’ve got the Blue Mound Blues”, after the company lost two proposals along the same stretch of Wisconsin roadway.
