Lowe's looks to set up new camp - Brief Article

Home Channel News, May 1, 2001

Planned campus-like corporate facility necessary to accommodate retailer's growth over the next five years

WILKESBORO, N.C. -- After 55 years in rural Wilkes County, Lowe's has set its sights on a North Charlotte suburb that would serve as an extension of its headquarters facility here.

In mid-April, Lowe's announced that it has purchased options on a 135-acre site located 20 miles north of Charlotte in Mooresville, a small town in North Carolina's Iredell County.

Lowe's said that the new facility is needed to accommodate the retailer's planned growth over the next five years, during which Lowe's expects to hire an additional 100,000 employees nationwide and 1,000 new employees at the corporate level.

"We believe the development of a corporate presence in the rapidly growing greater Charlotte metropolitan area will provide the company flexibility in attracting and retaining the highly skilled work force that will be essential to our future growth," said Bob Tillman, Lowe's chairman, president and CEO, in a prepared statement.

The company stressed that the new facility -- which would resemble a campus with multiple, interconnected buildings -- would be an expansion of its corporate presence here in the state and not a replacement for its current headquarters. Lowe's said it intends to keep its three corporate offices in Wilkes County and turn them into customer support centers.

Nevertheless, the retailer said it expects to reduce its Wilkesboro staff to somewhere between 1,700 and 2,000 employees from 2,450, according to a report in the Winston-Salem Journal. These would be relocations, the dealer explained, not layoffs. The newspaper also reported that an undetermined number of executives are expected to move to the Mooresville campus. Sixty percent of Lowe's executives already live outside of Wilkes County anyway, a Lowe's spokesperson said. Lowe's also told the Journal that it has not yet decided where Tillman will set up his main office.

Lowe's spokesman Brian Peace did not respond to an NHCN interview request.

Could be moved in by 2004

During its search for a corporate facility in a larger metropolitan area, the retailer said it considered sites in Charlotte, Raleigh and even out-of-state locations such as Dallas, Chicago and Jacksonville, Pa., before deciding on Mooresville/North Charlotte.

Tillman said the relative proximity of the Mooresville site to Lowe's current headquarters -- it's about 50 miles south of Wilkesboro -- played a key role in Lowe's decision to secure the rights to the acreage. That closeness to Wilkes County "will minimize the impact to the local community and to employees who may be affected by this expansion," he said.

The retailer has not yet established a timetable for its construction and stressed that the purchase still depends on its ability to work out various details with local and state officials. Some of those matters include road and utilities improvements. Should these arrangements be worked out, Lowe's said it expects to begin construction as soon as 2002 and start occupying the facility in early 2004.

The first wave of occupancy would bring approximately 1,000 corporate employees to Mooresville, though Lowe's said it has not determined which department functions would be part of the initial expansion.

Lowe's was founded in 1946 as Lowe's North Wilkesboro Hardware and has since grown into an $18 billion, Fortune 500 company that is the world's second-largest home improvement retailer.