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Shopping Centers Today -> May 2004
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‘OPEN HERE,’ CHICAGO SUBURB IMPLORES TARGET
BY IAN RITTER
Officials of the village of Evergreen Park can’t believe that some municipalities are banning big-box stores. They’ve just welcomed Wal-Mart with open arms, and they’re working hard to attract a Target too.
“I don’t know how, in these economic times, people could push away a Wal-Mart or a Target,” said Evergreen Park Mayor James Sexton. “I have women sending in notes that say, ‘I’ll sleep there.’”
In this case, however, it’s Target that seems to be doing all the pushing away.
This southwest Chicago suburb of 21,000 residents is in the midst of a lively campaign it calls Neighbors Unite to Attract Target. The goal is to persuade a reluctant Target to take over a former Montgomery Ward in The Plaza, a 52-year-old, 800,000-square-foot regional mall with Carson Pirie Scott and Circuit City as anchors. So far, no luck. (Target would not comment for this story.)
But though Evergreen Park is hardly on Target’s radar, the retailer has long been on the minds of the local shoppers, according to Kansas City, Mo.-based Provo Group, which manages the Plaza. In late 2001 Provo Group surveyed about 10,000 shoppers to find out who they wanted to occupy the 220,000-square-foot Montgomery Ward space, which closed when the chain went out of business in 2001. More than 60 percent of respondents said they wanted Target.
Provo Group approached Target in 2001 but talks fell through, says Bruce Provo, the firm’s president. One stumbling block was Target’s skepticism about taking the two-level space, he says (most Target stores are single-level).
Provo resubmitted proposals in January that give Target the option of buying a site west of the mall on which it can build its own store. At press time Target had not responded to the new proposal.
But Evergreen Park remains ever hopeful. “They’re going to find out what huge numbers they can do in that area,” Provo said.
Lynne Brackett agrees.
“I’m at a loss as to why they would not be interested,” said Brackett, the vice president of brokerage services at the CB Richard Ellis Oakbrook, Ill., office. “It’s very densely populated, with not a lot of sites to be found. I would think they want to be here.”
Residents certainly have reasons for wanting the retailer there.
“It’s a convenience factor,” said Willie Winters, executive director of the Beverly Area Planning Association, which represents the Chicago neighborhoods of Beverly Hills and Morgan Park in pursuit of Target. “If Target goes into the Plaza, it helps us out.”
Beverly Hills-Morgan Park residents now drive 20 minutes to Crestwood to visit the Target there, says Winters. They’d be happy to do that closer to home, he says, and they’re not exactly short of money: Household incomes average about $66,000 a year, the third-highest in Chicago. Within a five-mile radius of the Plaza, the median family income is $50,000, says Provo Group.
Meanwhile, the village and planning association heartily press their case. They’ve received 3,300 responses to their own survey asking residents how often they shop at Target, how much they spend and how far they travel to get there. The response, like that of the Provo Group survey, was overwhelmingly in favor of Target’s coming to the village, Sexton says.
In the meantime, Wal-Mart has been enjoying the royal treatment. The village is renovating the streetscape along the Plaza’s 95th Street retail corridor, across the street from which the new Wal-Mart is scheduled to open in November.
And of course, the light is still on in the window for Target too. “We’re here, we have money,” Winters said. “Bring us the stores and we’ll shop there.”
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