Target: The Bronx

According to a report in The New York Times, Target Stores (Minneapolis) will anchor a new urban retail center in New York.

The site had previously been a warehouse area in Marble Hill, a neighborhood of The Bronx that is technically part of Manhattan. The warehouse, off the Major Deegan Expressway near West 225th Street, had been used by Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center to store medical records. There are also five smaller adjacent commercial structures.

The plan, according to Kingsbridge Associates, New York-based developer, is to replace all six buildings with a 230,000-square-foot retail center, including a Target department store, on 9.45 sloping acres alongside the Harlem River and adjacent to the Major Deegan Expressway and W. 225th Street, which becomes W. Kingsbridge Road in The Bronx.

The developer says the site, near mass transit stations as well as major roadways, has 350,000 people with median household incomes of $53,000 living within a mile and a half of it.

Construction of the $80 million development is expected to begin in November and finish by spring 2004. It will include three one- and two-story buildings and house up to 16 stores, all with separate entrances facing W. 225th Street, as well as a small amount of office space.

The Target anchor store is expected to be 120,000 square feet and other tenants, including one restaurant, will occupy spaces ranging from 2,500 to 35,000 square feet. There will be parking for 809 cars.

This would be the first Target store in the Bronx. The retailer, which has two stores in Queens and will open one in Brooklyn in October. would not comment on the planned Bronx store, but Bronx borough president Adolfo Carri—n Jr., confirmed to The Times that Target was the anchor.