Viewed from any angle, Home Depot's closing here last week is bleak news and bound to cause concern. It comes on the heels of a report in The State Journal that the sale of single-family homes took a nosedive in the first three months of this year compared to last year. They are down about $4 million. Go back two years and the needle is off by about $10 million. That's more than a slump.

Home Depot's belly up locally was not a shocker to seasoned analysts who have long been reading the signs of trouble. The closing, however, did raise eyebrows locally by those who knew of the dark economic clouds but expected a staff reduction instead of the padlock.

Fit into Home Depot's overall picture, what happened in Frankfort was an easy decision: the company was simply not making enough money in 15 of its stores " it has more than 2,250 counting Mexico and Canada " and the poor producers got culled.

The nearly 90 employed at the store in the West Ridge Shopping Center will join 1,300 " in such places as East Fort Wayne, Ind., and Saddle Brook, N.J. " the ranks of the unemployed unless they qualify personally and professionally for the offer to work elsewhere.

Nor was Home Depot alone with the red ink. A number of big retailers, some with outlets in Frankfort, are adjusting their plans to fit the economic downturn. Among them are J.C. Penny and Wal-Mart. Starbucks, which recently opened its second store in Frankfort, has about 100 stores with a profit and loss question mark.

They are all faced with flat out closing stores like Home Depot, delaying the opening of new ones or shelving plans for expansion. For example, twinned with the news of Home Depot's shutting down of the 15 stores was the reminder (to deal with sagging consumer confidence) that it still has plans to build 50 more stores. But now it would be at a slower pace.

It's not like the grim economic events suddenly descended from the heavens. Deep thinkers wedded to charts and graphs have for years been leery of ambitious expansion plans like Home Depot's. They warned of an "over-stored" nation and fizzling sales, particularly with the do-it-yourself home improver when it no longer made financial sense to build a new patio or remodel the basement.

Rather, the experts said the Home Depots and Wal-Marts of the world should concentrate on what they had " instead of marching to the drumbeat of "bigger is better." Frankfort will have a long time to ponder the wisdom of "over stored" in the shadow of Home Depot's hulking ghost in the West Ridge Shopping Center.