Targeting changes in big box stores

One chain increasingly tailors its stores to the urban market by including two levels, escalators, and structured parking. Until recently, all Target stores were the typical single-story boxes with surface parking. But in the last half-decade, Target has built or acquired 35 multilevel stores with structured parking and another 8 stores with parking underneath. In all, about 3 percent of Target’s 1,350 stores nationwide have unusual urban formats that Target calls “unique.” Unlike Wal-Mart, which so far has resisted radical changes to its building designs, Target has gone so far as to build one store in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Terminal that has no dedicated parking. Another store planned in Queens, New York, will be beneath 800 housing units. The trend is growing, according to Scott Jordan-Denny, manager for unique store design, and Rich Varda, vice president for store design, both of whom spoke to New Urban News. There are dozens of unique Targets on the drawing board. The first two-story Target opened in 1999 in the Washingtonian Center, a lifestyle center in Gaithersburg, Maryland, centered on a main street. At around the same time, the firm purchased two-story Montgomery Ward stores and converted them to Targets. The company has since built stores in downtowns

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