{"id":9914,"date":"2021-11-23T17:10:19","date_gmt":"2021-11-23T17:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.l3corp.net\/wordpress\/?p=9914"},"modified":"2024-06-21T14:52:12","modified_gmt":"2024-06-21T14:52:12","slug":"why-the-new-midtown-target-store-is-a-game-changer-for-retail-inside-st-louis-city-limits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.l3corp.net\/wordpress\/2021\/why-the-new-midtown-target-store-is-a-game-changer-for-retail-inside-st-louis-city-limits\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the new Midtown Target store is a ‘game changer’ for retail inside St. Louis city limits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Original Article By: Gloria Lloyd<\/a>, St. Louis Business Journal<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

During the week, Saint Louis University\u2019s campus shuttles ferry students around campus, stopping at classes and campus buildings. But on Saturdays, the only shuttle is for shopping.<\/p>\n

Eight times each weekend, SLU\u2019s shopping shuttle takes students on a 20-minute drive to the closest retail center to campus. One of its most popular stops is the Target at the Brentwood Promenade shopping center. The bus also stops at Walmart and Whole Foods.<\/p>\n

But starting in summer 2023, SLU students looking to shop in Midtown won\u2019t need to catch a shuttle to St. Louis County. Residents of Reinert Hall, a freshman dormitory, will be a three-minute walk from a new 70,000-square-foot Target store.<\/p>\n

Richmond Heights-based developer Pier Property Group announced in October that a\u00a0Target will anchor<\/a>\u00a0The Edwin, a new $60 million apartment and retail project it’s developing next to SLU along Grand Boulevard between Gratiot and Papin streets. Construction started this month.<\/p>\n

Officials with the university said they had tried for nearly a decade to convince Target to open a store in Midtown. Now they, along with other local retail experts, believe the Minneapolis-based retail giant could become the catalyst that draws even more retail into the city limits.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been dreaming of a Target for a very long time,\u201d said\u00a0David Heimburger<\/a>, SLU’s chief financial officer, who also chairs the board of the Midtown Redevelopment Corp. that manages development on 400 acres around the campus, including The Edwin site. \u201cIt really is a game changer for our students and for Midtown.\u201d<\/p>\n

Landing the Target<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most of the big-box stores in the city limits are clustered on the edges of south city, such as the Lowe\u2019s at Loughborough Commons near Interstate 55, which\u00a0opened in 2007<\/a>. Although\u00a0new stores were still opening<\/a>\u00a0in that development in 2019, until this year Loughborough and the\u00a02015 opening of Ikea<\/a>\u00a0near Midtown were the last large big-box retail sites built in the city limits.<\/p>\n

University officials had been talking to Target for a decade, but finding a space to fit a full-size store \u2014 which the retailer says averages around 130,000 square feet \u2014 was difficult.\u00a0Michael Hamburg<\/a>, owner of Pier Property Group,\u00a0said he had long heard “rumblings” that Target desired a Midtown location, so he “cold called” company representatives in February or March.<\/p>\n

The prospect of landing a new St. Louis store had become more likely in the past several years, when Target began opening smaller-format stores in urban centers and around colleges. Those stores are typically around 40,000 square feet but can be as small as 12,000 square feet. As of 2019, Target said it had\u00a0more than two dozen small-format stores<\/a>\u00a0on or near college campuses.<\/p>\n

At 70,000 square feet, the new Midtown store will land between the typical small-format and large-format stores. But people involved in the deal say the Edwin location was attractive to Target because of how it offers some of the benefits of both formats.<\/p>\n

Target was drawn to The Edwin for its close proximity to the SLU campus, but also because, unlike other urban Target stores, it will also have room for traditional parking lots, said real estate broker\u00a0Rick Spector<\/a>\u00a0of L3 Corp., who represented Pier in the Target transaction.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt allowed them to get much closer to their traditional store in an urban setting, and those two checkmarks are what was finally able to get them over the hurdle of, \u2018how do we do something in this area?\u2019\u201d Spector said.<\/p>\n

Benefits beyond campus<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even before Target signed on the dotted line, Heimburger and retail brokers saw a turning point for Midtown with the\u00a0$300 million mixed-use City Foundry STL development<\/a>, which opened St. Louis\u2019 first food hall in August. Prior to the Nov. 10 opening in City Foundry of a\u00a0new flagship grocery store for Fresh Thyme Market<\/a>, Midtown had no grocery stores.<\/p>\n

Developers plan to bring even more entertainment choices to Midtown as part of 180,000-square-foot\u00a0The Armory development<\/a>\u00a0and the ongoing buildout of City Foundry, where construction has started on the two anchor tenants, mini golf restaurant Puttshack and dine-in cinema Alamo Drafthouse.<\/p>\n

Patrick Willett<\/a>, a broker with Pace Properties who is working to bring unique or new-to-St. Louis retailers to City Foundry, said it can be difficult to convince national retailers to be trailblazers in the central corridor. Ikea and City Foundry started to overpower those concerns, but Willett said an \u201ciconic\u201d retail brand like Target will serve as a beacon for other retailers looking to locate in St. Louis for the first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce they get to town and feel the momentum, it becomes a whole lot easier, but you\u2019ve got to get over the hurdles,\u201d Willett said. \u201cWhen we brought Ikea into Missouri and into the city limits, that was the beginning of credible retail happening in the Midtown area. And now you have Target and Fresh Thyme and Puttshack and Alamo Drafthouse \u2014 we\u2019re really starting to build some incredible momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spector is on a similar hunt for the retailers that will surround the new Target or future developments around The Edwin. That search got much easier by signing Target, which he called \u201cevery retailer\u2019s best co-tenant.\u201d He also credits the\u00a0new $550 million SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital<\/a>, Pier\u2019s existing new apartments already built in Steelcote Square, and the\u00a0boutique retail experience in the Central West End<\/a>\u00a0as key lures for the Target.<\/p>\n

A second St. Louis-area Topgolf location\u00a0could also be coming to SLU-owned land<\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0the northwest corner of\u00a0South Compton and Chouteau avenues\u00a0, just a few blocks east of The Edwin.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of things that got Target to this point, but Target is going to help us get to that next step after that,\u201d Spector said. \u201cWhat this can do to an area is so much greater than what people realize. This will be very, very good for the area and the retail market in general.\u201d<\/p>\n

More to come from SLU<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite university officials\u2019 commitment to landing a Target, even they were taken aback by students\u2019 response to the Target news, which was the most-shared page on SLU\u2019s website all year, and one of its most popular ever.<\/p>\n

Beyond the initial enthusiasm, it\u2019s not yet known whether the new Target could help increase enrollment or recruitment. But Heimburger said officials have long known that a Target store close to campus would make students happier, which is why university officials were so committed to making it happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s interesting that something non-academic could generate this much excitement on campus,\u201d Heimburger said.<\/p>\n

Now that Target is coming, the university is focused on bringing more entertainment options to property SLU controls around the campus, as the social and emotional aspects of student life become more central to campus culture. The Midtown Redevelopment Corp. can grant incentives to developers, and the board is in talks with Target. That’s separate from tax abatement talks between the city and Target, which are ongoing.<\/p>\n

Heimburger said the university is in talks with several large national developers about \u201ctransformational opportunities\u201d that could open near campus, though he declined to provide details at this time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that we\u2019re looking to be West County. It\u2019s going to have a unique flair,\u201d Heimburger said of the potential developments, pointing to City Foundry\u2019s anchor tenants as examples of the types of retail options that students, employees and the community would love to see the most. \u201cWe\u2019re not trying to reinvent anything, just capitalize on what came before us. It\u2019s just exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

TARGET AT ‘THE EDWIN’<\/h3>\n

What:<\/strong>\u00a0The Edwin will be a 196-unit apartment complex in Midtown anchored by a Target store<\/p>\n

Developer:<\/strong>\u00a0Pier Property Group, based in Richmond Heights<\/p>\n

Location<\/strong>: South Grand Boulevard and Gratiot Street<\/p>\n

Opening:<\/strong>\u00a0Late summer 2023.<\/p>\n

Square feet:\u00a0<\/strong>Total: 265,000, with Target accounting for 70,000. Underground parking is another 75,000 square feet.<\/p>\n

Cost:<\/strong>\u00a0$60 million<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Original Article By: Gloria Lloyd, St. Louis Business Journal During the week, Saint Louis University\u2019s campus shuttles ferry students around campus, stopping at classes and campus buildings. But on Saturdays, the only shuttle is for shopping. Eight times each weekend,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":9915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[59,23,147,502,27,505],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.l3corp.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Cover-Photo-Target-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paJlAd-2zU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.l3corp.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9914"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.l3corp.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.l3corp.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.l3corp.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.l3corp.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9914"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.l3corp.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13621,"href":"https:\/\/www.l3corp.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9914\/revisions\/13621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.l3corp.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.l3corp.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.l3corp.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.l3corp.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}