Home Depot to close Braselton center

Home Depot doesn’t own the 554,200-square foot building on Ga. Hwy. 124 (Broadway Avenue), according to Jackson County tax records. The building was built as a spec warehouse several years before Home Depot moved into the facility. It is one of several large distribution centers in the area, including Havertys, Petco, Tractor Supply and Whole Foods.

Home Depot moved into the Braselton building in 2008 and the company finished its other rapid deployment centers in the nation in 2010, according to Holmes.

“That building was not built for mechanism,” he explained.

As it operates, multiple vendors deliver products to one side of the building and those items then flow through the facility to get to specific tractor-trailer trucks on the other side of the building, Holmes said. Those trucks then deliver the products to Home Depot stores.

The other 18 rapid deployment centers were exceeding Home Depot’s goals, but the Braselton facility wasn’t as mechanized to make the operation more efficient, Holmes said.

“We’re able to serve all of our U.S. stores with the more modernized centers,” he said.

Home Deport has almost 2,000 stores in the nation and the Braselton facility largely served the Southeastern U.S., Holmes said.

Still, company officials had a difficult time deciding to close the Braselton facility because its employees have done a great job, he added. Home Depot officials gave the closure news face-to-face with associates.

Home Depot is helping its Braselton employees find careers elsewhere in the company. Otherwise, it is offering an “enhanced severance package” to those affected workers, Holmes said.

That’s the second bit of local bad news from Home Depot this year. In February, the company announced that it would build a new distribution center in Henry County, dashing long-held speculation that Home Depot would buy the vacant 962,000-square-foot Rooker building in the Commerce 85 Industrial Park. Home Depot needed 1.2 million square foot and ultimately decided to build a new building rather than buy the Rooker building. The Henry County location also offered the company the ability to utilize some existing personnel, officials said.