Local businessman braces for war with Home Depot

Acorn Staff Writer


MICHAEL COONS/The Acorn Jess Ruf, CEO of Do-It Centers

MICHAEL COONS/The Acorn Jess Ruf, CEO of Do-It Centers





Local businessman braces for war with Home Depot By John Loesing Acorn Staff Writer



The community still doesn’t have a correct picture of how Home Depot will harm Agoura Hills, according to Jess Ruf, owner of a local home improvement store that may be threatened if the national retailer opens here.


Ruf (pronounced roof) purchased Agoura Hills’ Lumber City in 1986 and later made it part of his 10-store California Do-It Center chain. The Agoura Hills resident also owns nine Patio World stores and the Neiman Reed lumber wholesaler.


Do-It Center and two other Home Depot foes, Roadside Lumber and Agoura Equipment Rentals, are backers of a controversial referendum aimed at letting voters decide whether big box retailers should be allowed in the city.


Supporters turned in petitions that they hope will bring the ballot measure to a vote early next year. Ruf said he’s spent $30,000 on the referendum so far, mostly in legal costs.


Recent comments by Agoura City Councilman Jeff Reinhardt that potential stores such as Best Buy, Circuit City and Sportsmart would be eliminated by the referendum aren’t true, Ruf said. The purpose of the measure is to put retailers bigger than 60,000 to a vote of the people and the stores cited by Reinhardt are rarely that large, according to Ruf.


"My point is Agoura Hills’ infrastructure can’t handle a big box. I don’t care who it is," Ruf said. Home Depot has built stores smaller than 60,000 square feet in other communities, so why not in Agoura Hills, asked Ruf.


"Bring them on in because they won’t create the traffic mess that they do with the 140,000 square-footers," he said.


Ruf knows firsthand about what it means to compete against the nation’s largest home improvement chain. His stores have felt bottom-line effects.


"There’s not enough market share for a traditional 40,000 square-foot home center to share with a 140,000 square-foot warehouse operation," Ruf said.


One of Ruf’s Patio World locations is in Mountain View, Calif. Unlike Agoura Hills, the Bay Area city has a referendum in the works that favors big box stores. Home Depot initiated the referendum.


While both cities currently have ordinances prohibiting large retailers—the Agoura Hills cap is 60,000 square feet and the Mountain View cap is 50,000 square feet—each referendum would send the laws in different directions.


The Agoura Hills measure would take away the power of the city council to override the ordinance and approve large retailers, and give the voters the right to decide on big boxes. Mountain View’s referendum overturns the city’s prohibition on super stores altogether, thereby opening the door for Home Depot.


"[Home Depot’s] initiative is to amend the precise plan to specifically allow big box retail use," said Mike Percy, Mountain View principal planner. "Right now they’re prohibited."


Ruf’s Patio World in Mountain View is located three miles from the proposed Home Depot, but Ruf said it wouldn’t be affected nearly as much as a Do-It Center.


He disputes claims that when Do-It Center (formerly Lumber City) arrived in Agoura Hills in 1980, it did precisely what he accuses Home Depot of doing; eliminating the competition. The city’s only hardware related business at the time was Ace Hardware, now Roadside Lumber. Offering different product lines, Do-It Center and Roadside have coexisted for more than 20 years, but Home Depot’s cross-marketing strategy would endanger both businesses, according to retail experts.


"It’s small business as opposed to Wall Street business," said Ruf, who describes Home Depot as employing "animal" and "guerilla" marketing tactics. "Predatory" is the adjective most commonly used on the voluminous anti-Home Depot Internet sites.


"Every day of the week these guys are breaking price laws in the state of California because you have to be 5 percent above cost, but nobody ever enforces that," Ruf said. "Is it capitalism or is it monopoly?"


A Home Depot spokesperson declined to comment on the company’s pricing policies.


Neighborhood battles against Home Depot and others such as Wal Mart are so frequent they’ve become part of retail lore.


In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stop a class-action lawsuit that accused Home Depot of illegal job bias in 10 Western states. The lawsuit was brought by 217,000 women, including 200,000 prospective employees and 17,000 current and former employees.


The company has received criticism in other areas as well.


"The research on Home Depot’s national reputation show that they are anti-residential," said Ken Horton, a candidate for Agoura Hills City Council who said he spent close to 100 hours looking at Home Depot’s track record.


According to official planning documents, the Home Depot in Thousand Oaks went under investigation in the early 1990s for a variety of code violations including noisy truck deliveries in late night and early morning hours.


Residents fear similar problems in Agoura Hills, even though zoning laws relegate all big boxes to the less populated south side of the 101 Freeway.


The Thousand Oaks Home Depot eventually moved to a new location in Newbury Park. Another Home Depot is being planned for the renovated Fallbrook Mall.


Bill Parisi, an independent home improvement contractor in Agoura Hills, has mixed feelings about the big retailer coming to town, but mostly he opposes it.


"It would help my business fantastically if Home Depot came here," Parisi said, but he doubts Home Depot would be as charitable as the city’s existing businesses. When Parisi donates his work to churches and other organizations, he often calls upon the smaller business for free supplies.


"They came through the hard times here when there really wasn’t a lot of business here," Parisi said. "It’s unfair."


Ruf said he met with developer Dan Selleck about moving Do-It Center to the 255,000 square-foot shopping center where Home Depot is to be located, but the cost was too high.


Selleck, meanwhile, remains bogged down with redevelopment of the Agoura Road shopping center site. Ruf criticized the city for suggesting powers of eminent domain might be needed to acquire the site and push the project along.


"On the one hand, the elitist Republican will say it’s ice cream and apple pie, and capitalism. On the other hand, they will take and condemn a man’s property and give it to a public agency," Ruf said.


Anti-Home Depot forces are hoping the referendum is approved and that voters will have the final say.


"I think this initiative will fly," Ruf said.






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