After several months of negotiations, Wilkesboro, NC-based Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouses has closed on the purchase of the Hart Graphics Redevelopment site in Central Austin. This 16.4-acre site includes four buildings totaling 226,301 square feet. Hart Graphics closed its facilities in 2001. Lowe's plans to demolish three of the four existing buildings and construct a 140,000-square-foot store with landscaped parking fronting Shoal Creek Blvd. Delivery is slated for March 2003. The three buildings that will be razed this July are a 162,855-square-foot former printing and warehouse facility at 8000 Shoal Creek Blvd will be razed along with two office buildings of 10,584 and 4,862 square feet at 8008-8020 Shoal Creek and 8030 Shoal Creek. The fourth building, a 48,000-square-foot warehouse-to-office conversion at 3301 Steck Avenue, may later be resold, according to Gail Whitfield of The Whitfield Company, who negotiated for Lowe's. Royce Lacey and Alan Lacey with NAI/Commercial Industrial Properties handled talks for Hart Graphics. Lowe's, the second largest home improvement retailer in the country, entered the state of Texas in 1979. The company currently has 53 stores in Texas, 3 of which operate in Austin. Another 15 stores are currently under construction in the state, with an Austin store planned in the I-35/Parmer Lane area.