Home Depot moving ahead on large distribution center in Yaphank

Home Depot will move forward with plans to open a large warehouse and distribution center in Yaphank as the company looks to expand across North America.

Brookhaven Logistics Center, an affiliate of Kansas City-based NorthPoint Development, started construction on a 414,000-square-foot building for Home Depot this spring, said Andrew Villari, a development manager at NorthPoint.

Home Depot will lease the warehouse once it’s completed, a spokesperson for the Atlanta-based company told Newsday in an email, though the person declined to comment further on the project.

Villari told Newsday he hopes to finish the shell of the building in the fall of next year. Once it’s finished, Home Depot will renovate the inside for its operations.

"It’s exciting" because the warehouse "was a long time coming," he said.

The development will cost roughly $157 million, according to Brookhaven Logistics Center’s application for tax benefits from the Brookhaven Industrial Development agency.

In March, Home Depot shared plans for the new facility with the IDA, and asked for tax exemptions of up to $481,250 to renovate the building once it’s completed, Newsday reported. Home Depot estimated spending $11 million to outfit the facility.

But the IDA has not yet approved those benefits, nor has it held a public hearing on the possible incentives for Home Depot.

In its IDA application, Brookhaven Logistics Center estimated the development would create 200 new jobs, starting at $23 per hour for hourly workers and range from $77,202 to $191,127 per year for salaried workers.

The project also would be outfitted with light rail that would connect to Ronkonkoma-bound train tracks with the site, which should help to reduce potential traffic impact, said Brookhaven Town Supervisor Dan Panico.

Panico said the new jobs generated by the facility would be a win for the town, especially given the industrial site’s history.

"It will generate employment, and ultimately, it is because the Town of Brookhaven has tried and, I think, succeeded in making lemonade out of lemons," Panico said.

The long-undeveloped site had a history with lawsuits and environmental violations. The plot’s previous owner, Brookhaven Rail Terminal, was fined in 2015 for illegal dumping and unauthorized sand mining, and later sold the 228-acre site to NorthPoint in 2024, Newsday reported.

National expansion

The project represents a major expansion for Home Depot as the company looks to grow its North American supply chain.

"Home Depot is making a significant investment in updating their supply chain with state-of-the-art distribution facilities throughout the U.S.," Kevin Reddick, the company’s senior director of tax counsel, wrote to the Brookhaven IDA in the application.

The new facility would serve customers with same-day and next-day delivery who want to buy bulkier items best delivered with light rail and flatbed trucks — like lumber, building materials and flooring, Reddick wrote.

The expansion fits in with Home Depot’s long-term strategy to get more professional contractors to purchase the company’s building materials, said Marius Morar, director of research and securities at Zelman & Associates, who researches Home Depot.

"Their plan is to basically have almost all the products that a pro contractor would buy," Morar said.

In the past two years, Home Depot has acquired three companies that have expanded its reach into building products, drywall and steel framing and heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, Morar said.

Home Depot’s new lease for the yet-to-be-completed building comes as Suffolk County has seen industrial businesses lease a significant amount of space.

Nearly 75% of all new leases signed on Long Island in the second quarter of this year were for buildings in Suffolk County, according to a report from the commercial real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield. Overall, the Island has a limited amount of vacant industrial space, with a vacancy rate of just 4.9%.