This story first ran in the Aug. 1 edition of the Daily Post.
BY AMELIA BISCARDI
Daily Post Staff Writer
The Target in East Palo Alto will be shutting down on Sept 28.
East Palo Alto Mayor Antonio Lopez said the city didn’t get much advance notice.
This Target at 1775 E. Bayshore Road in the Ravenswood 101 Shopping Center is one of the few options in East Palo Alto to purchase groceries and pharmacy items.
Lopez said that the city is speaking with the landlord to ensure its replacement would benefit the community.
“I think that the Target had a neighborhood kind of character to it,” Lopez said. “It was more of a neighborhood store. And I think one of the things that we want to make sure that we replace it with is still providing that convenience for folks.”
In 2020, the East Palo Alto City Council discussed having developer Sand Hill Property Company add a grocery store to its proposed development at Bay Road and University Avenue. Lopez says that he expects those discussions to come up again.
Despite the store’s small square footage, it houses a CVS Pharmacy and a Starbucks.
With Target leaving, that would mean residents would only have one general pharmacy in town — Drew Center Pharmacy on University Avenue.
Target did not respond to a request for comment from the Post, but told SF Gate the closure is due to “prolonged underperformance.”
CNBC reported in September on Target’s plans to close nine stores due to theft and violence, including in San Francisco. However an investigation by CNBC revealed that there were open stores nearby with even more reported crimes.
The buildings hosting Target and Nordstrom Rack at the Ravenswood Shopping Center sold on May 20, 2021, for $53 million.
The landlord, Bayshore 1771 LLC, is a company registered in Delaware that bought the property from real estate investment company Regency Centers Corporation, according to broker JLL Capital.
The two buildings comprise 92,110 square feet of the 430,000-square-foot shopping center off Highway 101, across the freeway from the Four Seasons Hotel.
Well, no surprise … all that shoplifting 🙁
Except that’s not why it’s closing.
Hahaha
That Target is always busy, so I doubt it was underperforming. It’s probably just a way to avoid saying that in a largely minority community the loss problem was unacceptable. I shop there every week and there are some pretty savory characters roaming inside, shoving items under their coats.
Baloney. The stores NEVER tell. It IS from shoplifting and related crimes it’s closing.
East Palo Alto residents were asked in a referendum if they wanted a grocery store where IKEA now stands. Oddly enough they picked IKEA over Safeway.
Target should never have allowed self checkout at this store.
No company should be forced to keep a store open if theft is rampant. If the community is OK with theft, then they should expect the store to close.
Again, theft isn’t why the store is closing. The cultivated bias and deliberate ignoring facts by some commenters reflects poorly on them.
Do you have any facts to back up your assertion? It’s not impossible to know whether the store had an unusual number of thefts.
Do you have any facts?
You’re just answering my question with a question, so it’s obvious that you don’t have any facts — you’re just making it up.