Target to Expand in North Carolina

Target Corp. (Minneapolis) has announced plans for four new Target stores in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle area of North Carolina. The expansion in the area seems motivated by the desire to join certain retailers in the area and compete with certain others.

The first of the four new Target stores will be in Wake Forest, N.C., near a Home Depot. It will be the state's first SuperTarget, and is scheduled to open in March.

Two others are planned for North Raleigh (at Brier Creek Commons and at Poynter Place) and one at White Oak Crossing in Garner, N.C. Target did not say whether or not those stores will be SuperTargets.

Two other area stores are being considered by Target, at South Square in Durham and at North Hills Mall in Raleigh.

Target has been a presence in the area since 1995, and some of the new locations are fairly close to existing stores. Target wouldn't comment on its strategy, except to say, “Where we're successful, we will be adding new stores.” But others see a clear competitive objective. “Target is in the process of preempting the good locations,” said Kurt Barnard, a retail analyst and president of Barnard's Retail Trend Report. “They would rather compete against themselves rather than have to compete with Wal-Mart. So long as the location is desirable, why not do it?”

Wal-Mart already has eight stores in the area and is known to be scouring the market looking for spaces for its supercenter concept.

Analysts say there might be two other reasons Target is so interested in the market. Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue both decided to enter the North Carolina market through the Triangle area. “The fact that the area has attracted a Nordstrom and a Saks means somebody obviously sees something in the demographics there, ” said Sally Wallick, a retail analyst with Legg Mason Wood Walker in Baltimore. “If the upscale shopper today is going to be shopping a discounter, she's going to be shopping at Target and not as likely to be at Wal-Mart.”

Nationally, Target has been opening more than 50 stores a year for the past five years, growing to about 1380 stores at the end of 2001. This year, Target has said it plans to add about 70 stores, boosting retail square footage by 12 percent. About 5 million of that additional square feet — or 40 percent of square footage growth in 2002 — will be SuperTargets.