Home Depot wants a waiver from city rules so that it can open its new store next month at 31st and Iowa streets, more than a month earlier than it would normally be allowed to open.

The city usually requires that public improvements — like the ongoing road construction at the intersection — be complete before stores will be issued a “certificate of occupancy.”

But the road construction won’t be substantially complete until late May, city officials say. And Home Depot wants to open its store April 10.

“The store, the employees and the site will be ready for customers April 10,” Dan Watkins, Home Depot’s Lawrence attorney, wrote in a memorandum to Lawrence city commissioners.

He said spring was the time for home improvements, and that the store could sell $4 million in inventory the first month if allowed to open early.

“Lawrence residents who are currently going to Topeka, Shawnee and Olathe to home improvement centers will have an alternative which is beneficial to the community through added jobs and sales tax revenues,” Watkins wrote.

And, he added, opening early will allow Home Depot to absorb many of the Kmart employees who are losing jobs because of that store’s closure here.

The attorney for Kmart’s Lawrence landlord, Jane Eldredge, had told the City Commission last month that her clients believed the 31st and Iowa road improvements, together with Home Depot’s construction, had choked off traffic to Kmart, killing the store during the normally busy holiday shopping season. City officials and Watkins disagreed.

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Lawrence Public Works Director Chuck Soules said a plan had been prepared to route Home Depot’s customers through an entrance at 31st Street and Ousdahl Road as a temporary main entrance for the store, until the intersection improvements were complete.

“The proposed interim plan will provide a construction zone as safe as any other,” Soules wrote in a memorandum.

City Commissioner David Dunfield, who initially opposed the rezoning and city investments required for the intersection, suggested Friday he would approve the early opening.

“I’m really just going to look at the safety issues and whether it will cause confusion to have the project partially open,” Dunfield said. “If I can be satisfied on those issues, I’ll probably vote for it.”

The City Commission will consider the request at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St.