Target announcing closures in Portland, Ore.; Seattle, Wash.; California; Harlem

[Super S]

It will be interesting to see what happens next in Portland.

There was a full size store at 122nd & Glisan that closed years ago. While watching the news tonight, KPTV also had a report citing Gateway and Cascade Station as high theft areas. Gateway has the Fred Meyer with extra security measures and a Kohl's that seems out of place. Cascade Station has a full size Target, IKEA, and several other stores.

[storewanderer]

Pittsburg is a very crime ridden and awful city. Expect to see bloody fistfights at the Walmart self checkout due people cutting in line. It is that bad. The other San Francisco Bay Area stores are tiny.

That Pittsburg Target looked like it may have opened in the late 80s and might have been lightly remodeled only once, to remove the colorful neon from the walls and turn Food Avenue into a Starbucks. It otherwise looked very old and neglected. I don't see any pictures showing updated signage so I'm assuming it still has its original sign.

My wife went to one of the Super locations today and got more of the rolls I liked. They're now featured and signed as a "new line" of product called "Favorite Day Bakery - Baked In Store" and they have tweaked how they make them by hand slicing little "slits" in the bread dough before they're baked for a more homemade appearance. So they definitely are relaunching the fresh departments that sat idle for years, maybe a decade or more. They're at least forming bread in store in more varieties than just French bread (maybe from thawing pre-made dough, but might actually be from a mix). But they aren't using the frozen thaw and bake bread in that bakery - those rolls you can see at Ralphs and they have the identical shape and identical indentations on top because they were pressed out by machine. The Ralphs rolls look like play food, or fake food and they mold in less than 24 hours regardless of condition. Yuck. I'll try to get over there and take pictures.

She also was able to get fresh sliced lunch meat at the deli, I'll try it tomorrow and see how it is. Kretschmar products.

I really wonder if they're going to make a run at fixing the remaining small formats that weren't closed in today's latest store culling, and making them primarily grocery stores based on the most recently updated food departments at SuperTarget. They have a new "Chief Growth Officer" who apparently has been tasked with finding ways to grow sales exponentially. Target basically had the chance to equal Walmart's supercenter build out but decided not to and in turn gave up probably a hundred billion dollars in food sales they could have snagged over the last couple decades. I think they've finally seen the light, the question is can they get the systems and processes fixed at the existing Super locations everywhere and then expand on it?

According to this thread of employees they're continuing to demolish or wall off bakery and deli on remodels as recently as 4 months ago.


Pittsburg is pretty rough. The Target is technically right across the street from Antioch which is also pretty rough. Best Buy closed in the center with Pittsburg Target a long time ago. Pak N Save left that center in the late 90s. JoAnn is still there. There is a Costco right behind the Target also. The Target had an interior remodel about 15 years ago.

[Alpha8472]

This is the bad part of Pittsburg and Antioch. There are suburbs to the east that are nicer looking. The closer you get to Brentwood is where you see nicer houses, more middle class people, and less crime. The Antioch Walmart is in a nicer neighborhood. The Pittsburg Walmart is in a dangerous area. It was dangerous even in the 90s.

Back in the 90s Pittsburg and Antioch started building really nice suburban houses that were affordable. Middle class people moved to Antioch and it was nice in that area for a while. Then the housing crash happened and there were tons of abandoned houses and the low income people moved in from Oakland. The neighborhoods became filled with drug dealing, drive by shootings, and Antioch became the mini Oakland of the far East Bay.

The Pittsburg Target had locked glass cabinets. However, you would see smashed glass and empty shelves.

This store was scary. You absolutely did not feel safe, and I would never go at night.

[ClownLoach]

Pittsburg is a very crime ridden and awful city. Expect to see bloody fistfights at the Walmart self checkout due people cutting in line. It is that bad. The other San Francisco Bay Area stores are tiny.

That Pittsburg Target looked like it may have opened in the late 80s and might have been lightly remodeled only once, to remove the colorful neon from the walls and turn Food Avenue into a Starbucks. It otherwise looked very old and neglected. I don't see any pictures showing updated signage so I'm assuming it still has its original sign.

My wife went to one of the Super locations today and got more of the rolls I liked. They're now featured and signed as a "new line" of product called "Favorite Day Bakery - Baked In Store" and they have tweaked how they make them by hand slicing little "slits" in the bread dough before they're baked for a more homemade appearance. So they definitely are relaunching the fresh departments that sat idle for years, maybe a decade or more. They're at least forming bread in store in more varieties than just French bread (maybe from thawing pre-made dough, but might actually be from a mix). But they aren't using the frozen thaw and bake bread in that bakery - those rolls you can see at Ralphs and they have the identical shape and identical indentations on top because they were pressed out by machine. The Ralphs rolls look like play food, or fake food and they mold in less than 24 hours regardless of condition. Yuck. I'll try to get over there and take pictures.

She also was able to get fresh sliced lunch meat at the deli, I'll try it tomorrow and see how it is. Kretschmar products.

I really wonder if they're going to make a run at fixing the remaining small formats that weren't closed in today's latest store culling, and making them primarily grocery stores based on the most recently updated food departments at SuperTarget. They have a new "Chief Growth Officer" who apparently has been tasked with finding ways to grow sales exponentially. Target basically had the chance to equal Walmart's supercenter build out but decided not to and in turn gave up probably a hundred billion dollars in food sales they could have snagged over the last couple decades. I think they've finally seen the light, the question is can they get the systems and processes fixed at the existing Super locations everywhere and then expand on it?

According to this thread of employees they're continuing to demolish or wall off bakery and deli on remodels as recently as 4 months ago.


Pittsburg is pretty rough. The Target is technically right across the street from Antioch which is also pretty rough. Best Buy closed in the center with Pittsburg Target a long time ago. Pak N Save left that center in the late 90s. JoAnn is still there. There is a Costco right behind the Target also. The Target had an interior remodel about 15 years ago.

These are remodeled SuperTarget stores, one of which was fully redone again earlier this year due to a fire. But the store that was redone is apparently the absolute #1 volume SuperTarget in the company, the only conventional market nearby is a train wreck and joke of a Ralphs and Stater Bros miles away either east or west. Otherwise it's nothing but an Aldi and new small format Sprouts in the immediate area. Obviously there is some investment happening, and reading that Reddit post I'd argue they're doing more in their bakeries now than Ralphs which is entirely thaw and serve or thaw and bake pre-made. Nobody is forming bread loaves there. I doubt much better is happening at Albertsons/Vons. So somehow in a world where everyone else keeps dropping their standards suddenly Target stands above which is shocking.

Obviously the statement from low level employees on Reddit that these areas are unprofitable is not correct otherwise they would have removed them everywhere. I am not sure of any SuperTarget that was fully remodeled between 2010 and about 2016, and many closed because of their locations on the fringes of suburbs that never filled out. I think they might have been considering the full closure or downsizing of every Super unit and we know that they did take the lowest performers and wall off deli/bakery and downsize grocery to P-Fresh format.

Then they started remodeling again in the Central Florida market in 2017 with the newer look and got those stores cleaned up. They did Texas and other areas like Colorado and Minneapolis. The handful in SoCal as well I believe have all been updated now; Moreno Valley just finished it's first remodel ever only three months ago and got polished concrete floors and kept all of "expanded grocery".

They definitely left enough space in the newest prototype XL format to add what they now refer to "Expanded Grocery" as well later.

There is also a group of oddball "small" SuperTarget stores like Goodyear AZ that do not have much more space than the P-Fresh format and really for all intents and purposes are regular Targets. I'm willing to bet all of those are losing that deli and Bakery space simply because they have absolutely nowhere in the front of the building to install the storage rooms for Drive Up and e-commerce shipping. The Reddit commenter probably works in one of those stores. Most Target stores had break rooms at the front by the registers, but they have removed those for Drive Up and built new break rooms and offices in part of the backroom. Most of the Supers were already set up similarly and thus had to demolish something to make room up front. One of the Supers nearest me, the smaller one, used to have electronics up front but moved it to the back in the remodel and walled off a huge portion of the front left corner for drive up, I'm sure if they didn't have that option then the deli and Bakery would have gone away. They're definitely going to prioritize drive up over all.

So there is definitely something going on because all these stores were pretty much left for dead, but now are receiving sizeable investments in most cases. Sounds like they're going to have a stable base of about 200 "expanded grocery" units mostly all remodeled in the last 5 years to the newest format and with full refreshes of those areas including new fixtures. If it didn't make money they wouldn't have spent millions of dollars per store like that.

[storewanderer]

These are remodeled SuperTarget stores, one of which was fully redone again earlier this year due to a fire. But the store that was redone is apparently the absolute #1 volume SuperTarget in the company, the only conventional market nearby is a train wreck and joke of a Ralphs and Stater Bros miles away either east or west. Otherwise it's nothing but an Aldi and new small format Sprouts in the immediate area. Obviously there is some investment happening, and reading that Reddit post I'd argue they're doing more in their bakeries now than Ralphs which is entirely thaw and serve or thaw and bake pre-made. Nobody is forming bread loaves there. I doubt much better is happening at Albertsons/Vons. So somehow in a world where everyone else keeps dropping their standards suddenly Target stands above which is shocking.

Obviously the statement from low level employees on Reddit that these areas are unprofitable is not correct otherwise they would have removed them everywhere. I am not sure of any SuperTarget that was fully remodeled between 2010 and about 2016, and many closed because of their locations on the fringes of suburbs that never filled out. I think they might have been considering the full closure or downsizing of every Super unit and we know that they did take the lowest performers and wall off deli/bakery and downsize grocery to P-Fresh format.

Then they started remodeling again in the Central Florida market in 2017 with the newer look and got those stores cleaned up. They did Texas and other areas like Colorado and Minneapolis. The handful in SoCal as well I believe have all been updated now; Moreno Valley just finished it's first remodel ever only three months ago and got polished concrete floors and kept all of "expanded grocery".

They definitely left enough space in the newest prototype XL format to add what they now refer to "Expanded Grocery" as well later.

There is also a group of oddball "small" SuperTarget stores like Goodyear AZ that do not have much more space than the P-Fresh format and really for all intents and purposes are regular Targets. I'm willing to bet all of those are losing that deli and Bakery space simply because they have absolutely nowhere in the front of the building to install the storage rooms for Drive Up and e-commerce shipping. The Reddit commenter probably works in one of those stores. Most Target stores had break rooms at the front by the registers, but they have removed those for Drive Up and built new break rooms and offices in part of the backroom. Most of the Supers were already set up similarly and thus had to demolish something to make room up front. One of the Supers nearest me, the smaller one, used to have electronics up front but moved it to the back in the remodel and walled off a huge portion of the front left corner for drive up, I'm sure if they didn't have that option then the deli and Bakery would have gone away. They're definitely going to prioritize drive up over all.

So there is definitely something going on because all these stores were pretty much left for dead, but now are receiving sizeable investments in most cases. Sounds like they're going to have a stable base of about 200 "expanded grocery" units mostly all remodeled in the last 5 years to the newest format and with full refreshes of those areas including new fixtures. If it didn't make money they wouldn't have spent millions of dollars per store like that.

We will see what happens. So many times we've heard Target has some kind of a commitment or renewed focus on grocery and it never goes anywhere. Remember a few years ago they were going to start to carry Boar's Head products? Where are they? I haven't seen any yet.

I agree their indifference and lack of follow through has cost them significantly and to me represents a major management failure that spans multiple groups of executives.

[storewanderer]

These Targets that are closing - I find this to be a non-event.

Pittsburg, CA the only full size store on the list has been in business for close to 30 years, so what if it closes, it has had a good run. The area is not great.

Downtown Portland, OR is another visible closure that I find somewhat odd but clearly there are major issues in Portland, they already downsized the place, so it isn't like they didn't try to make it work.

As far as the other 7 go, small format stores, lousy reviews from customers on Google, Yelp, etc., some questionable looking location choices.

I don't think these closures had much of anything to do with theft. They had more to do with the wrong stores, in the wrong size, in the wrong location, and a lack of customer support. Why Target is trying to blame this on theft as opposed to taking ownership for real estate and store size/merchandising mistakes is somewhat funny.

[babs]

These Targets that are closing - I find this to be a non-event.

Pittsburg, CA the only full size store on the list has been in business for close to 30 years, so what if it closes, it has had a good run. The area is not great.

Downtown Portland, OR is another visible closure that I find somewhat odd but clearly there are major issues in Portland, they already downsized the place, so it isn't like they didn't try to make it work.

As far as the other 7 go, small format stores, lousy reviews from customers on Google, Yelp, etc., some questionable looking location choices.

I don't think these closures had much of anything to do with theft. They had more to do with the wrong stores, in the wrong size, in the wrong location, and a lack of customer support. Why Target is trying to blame this on theft as opposed to taking ownership for real estate and store size/merchandising mistakes is somewhat funny.

The East Harlem store appears to be full-sized. I've been to the Costco in that mall (which is the smallest I've seen to date) but not the Target.

The downtown Portland store had theft issues but also other things going on. There was always a long line of homeless people out front waiting to return cans since the people who set up centralized bottle drop locations refused to put on in downtown portland...that little move might have saved this store. There were also a lot of drugged up or mentally ill people going into this store and causing problems. It's really too bad since downtown Portland needs this type of store to support the growing number of people who live in the area, those that work there, and the students at the nearby university. The irony is that the area near this store is probably the most active part of downtown.

The Jantzen Beach store is vulnerable to closure too. If the Interstate Bridge project happens, it will be hard to get to this store. In the meantime, the store barely has inventory since so much of it is stolen.

[Brian Lutz]

For as bad as that part of Downtown Seattle is, the Target store seems to do well in spite of the area. I think a lot of it is due to the fact that there are few other options for grocery shopping nearby if you live downtown, especially since the Kress IGA store closed a couple of years ago. Beyond the Target there's a Whole Foods in South Lake Union on Westlake Avenue and a couple of Asian grocers (H-Mart and Uwajimaya) plus whatever you can find at Pike Place Market (which is generally tourist-priced) but the closest "regular" grocery stores to Downtown would be a Safeway and QFC near Seattle Center in Lower Queen Anne or the Broadway Market QFC up on Capitol Hill.

[storewanderer]

Looking at East Harlem that is definitely a full size store too and looks quite a bit newer than Pittsburg, CA.

It also looks to be high traffic but it must be lower traffic than surrounding stores.

Also going back to the stated reason that these stores are closing due to high theft, do they think if the store closes, the shoplifters just magically evaporate? They will just move on to the next closest Target location.

[Alpha8472]

The nearest Target is very far away. The shoplifters will target the Walmart in Pittsburg first.

Then perhaps they will move to the Target in Pleasant Hill, California. That Target is a former Gemco and before that it was a White Front.

Back in the early 80s everyone loved going to Gemco. It was like the Costco of that time.