The new store, if approved, would become the fourth competitor for the south end do-it-yourself dollar after Scott McLendon’s Ace Hardware, Arrow Lumber and it’s main big-box rival, The Home Depot, which also has a store at Gig Harbor North, less than 10 miles away.

The proposed store will sit on approximately 14 acres and have 506 parking spaces. The site already has city water and sewer available, but 250,000 cubic yards of earth would be required to fill and grade the site.

Lowe’s started the approval process about six weeks ago, according to Joanne Long-Woods, Port Orchard’s city planner. Last month city planning officials sought public and agency comment on a proposed determination that the Lowe’s project doesn’t pose any significant environmental problems, as long as certain conditions are met to reduce the store’s impact.

Those mitigation conditions will be based on comments the city receives from members of the public and other government agencies, as well as Port Orchard’s city comprehensive plan and critical areas ordinance. A traffic study and wetlands analysis will have to be completed, according to the city, and other criteria will also have to be met.

This would be the second Kitsap County location for Lowe’s, which has 1,250 stores in 49 states. The home improvement retailer is slightly more than half the size of its main competitor, The Home Depot, which boasts more than 2,005 stores across the country, as well as in Canada and Mexico.

The Home Depot has been trying to establish a presence in South Kitsap for almost a decade, including originally trying to locate at the same intersection as the proposed Lowe’s. But challenges by local opponents of development, which led to protracted zoning issues, eventually forced The Home Depot to seek out another location.

The current site it’s shooting for on Bethel Road has also been entangled in the complicated county planning process for some time. If all goes according to plan, The Home Depot will build its new South Kitsap Store just south of Wal-Mart, extending onto the property where the recently shuttered Baxter Feed Store, which The Home Depot purchased earlier this year, stands.

So far the only property sale that’s been completed is the Baxter Feed property, although tentative sale agreements with other property owners have been reached. A technical review meeting was held at the end of July to determine if The Home Depot’s application is ready for a public hearing. Results of the meeting were not available at press time.

The Bethel Corridor Project, which includes four-laning the busy throughfare from Lundberg Road to Ives Mill Road, south of Sedgwick Road, as well as putting power distribution lines underground, is expected to cost the county $22 million, with adjoining property owners shelling out another $18 million for side roads. The project is expected to be completed, sometime in 2010 after about a year of construction.

Planning has been complicated by uncertainty about where the collector side streets, which are needed to keep Bethel Road from becoming congested, will be built. The current process, which allowed individual applicants a say about where the roads should go, has created problems when one property owner’s wishes conflicted with neighboring owners.