By Jodi Hausen,Staff Writer

FARMINGTON – Hopes for a Home Depot store in Farmington have been dashed – at least for now, according to a town official.

Code Enforcement Officer Steve Kaiser said Tuesday that a potential site, located across from Wal-Mart at the corner of Knowlton Corner and Wilton Roads, just became too expensive to justify Home Depot’s investing in “a secondary market.”

Don Harrison, a spokesman for Home Depot, could not verify that the company has decided to nix their Farmington plans. There is nothing on their construction calendar that indicates that they even had plans to build there, he said Tuesday.

But, “the fact that we pull out of one site has no bearing on” whether they build a store at another nearby location, he said.

According to Kaiser, developers are talking with another big-box retailer for the Wilton Road site though he declined to say which one.

Mark Conley of W/S Development Associates LLC of Chestnut Hill, Mass., a developer seeking retail opportunities throughout Maine, said Tuesday that he could not speak for Home Depot but did verify that Farmington is a “marginal market” for the retailer and that “it doesn’t help that the site is so difficult.”

Conley, who has worked with Home Depot on several successful projects in the state, said the number one item the company considers is market research.

“That has the biggest effect,” he said. “We’re having a tough time up there (in Farmington).”

If the market were very strong, we wouldn’t have this issue, he added.

Home Depot also doused plans to build a store on Route 26 in Oxford in July.

But, Conley said, if Home Depot doesn’t come to Farmington, he will work to find another store to anchor the proposed shopping center.

“We’ve been working on it all year,” he said. “We’ll work until we drop, that’s the name of the game.”

“Things are kind of in a lull right now,” Kaiser said. “A lot of people are looking at possibilities along Wilton Road,” he added.

In May, Will Haskell of Gorrill-Palmer Consulting Engineers in Gray, asked the town on behalf of Home Depot, to reduce a more than $200,000 proposed sewer connection fee saying the town overestimated the business’ potential use of the service. He also told them issues at the site will cost the developer almost $1.5 million more than anticipated, a fact that could drive Home Depot away.