The makeover of the Metreon kicked-off last May. Tomorrow, the new dining terrace and first wave of restaurants and retail will open for business with others following over the next six months. And in October, San Francisco’s first Target, an 85,000 square foot CityTarget with merchandise tailored for city-dwellers, including fresh groceries, will open as well.
High hopes for its success.
It has to be better than what it was. I think everyone knew the original concept was doomed from the beginning.
A lot of merchants in small corner stores have made a decent living selling stuff in SF at inflated prices. As bad as it is for us, they employ a lot of people and spend the profits locally, partly on real estate. Their landlords charge a lot too and make money off of the profits.
All of those businesses will lose business and many of them will close. The landlords will not be able to charge as much. Target will be great for me, but it sucks wealth out of the area and deposits it elsewhere. That’s always bad for real estate.
I suspect the impact will be relatively small though.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/16/walmart-nyc-small-business_n_1151361.html
Yea, they sure have been selling stuff at inflated prices. Maybe they will get a clue as to how to run a business.
Can’t wait to see Target open! Good for SF.
Tipster – Again, why are you so dramatic? It’s one store for the entire city. I think SF is big enough to absorb this Target without falling apart.
I cant believe anyone would support the idea of gouging san franciscans for goods so we can support the idea of mom and pop.
Pretty good indicator of whats wrong with this town.
People who live in SF 100% of the time really just don’t understand the reality of what they are subject to when it comes to prices for necessities. I am a 30-year resident of The City but for the last 10 I’ve been spending part of the year elsewhere–in a place with all the “big box” retail and such. And the difference in what I have to pay for basic stuff–from cat food/litter to laundry soap to canned goods–is amazing. It’s so bad I just can’t bring myself to pay the prices at SF brick/mortar retail any more and have started buying more and more such things online from Amazon and others (I’m a “prime” member so don’t pay shipping). I greatly look forward to Target as a place to get things on the spur of the moment at reasonable prices.
I don’t think having Target nearby is going to decimate small stores (if anything, it will just cut dramatically the number of auto trips between SF and Colma!) But for Willow’s benefit: it’s not just one Target, there is a second, full-sized Target going in at Geary and Masonic. So there will be (at least) two Targets for the city.
“People who live in SF 100%”, by that I assume you mean “primeSF”. Since this new Target is a lot farther away than the Serramonteo or Junipero Serra target to anyone on the West Side of Town.
“…there is a second, full-sized Target going in at Geary and Masonic. So there will be (at least) two Targets for the city.”
Two Targets for a city with an approximate population of 800,000 is very doable. Lots of city dwellers already shop at Target today. As Dubocian said, they shlep all the way to Daly City. There are two Macy’s in the city, Starbucks on almost every corner downtown and lots of Whole Foods and Safeway stores. Why is Target so different?
The only concern that I would have about the Target at the Metreon location is the parking. I know that there is a garage there, but getting in and out, as well as the capacity may be an issue.
Looking at it, 6th street is right in between TJ’s and the new Target, which means it will definitely help in the revitalization of Mid Market.
Overall, a fantastic addition to SOMA. Shopping in TJ + Target will be so much better than driving to Colma. I hate Colma…
PPC, I’d worry more about foot traffic than parking. The target (pun intended) audience is in big part city dwellers who will use either public transport or their own legs (walk/bike).
In both cases, people who will come out of the store onto the sidewalk with shopping bags.
Also, some of these shoppers will be picked up from the curb by cars… on a 5-lane street (Howard) with the crazy (2, sometimes 3 lanes) turn towards 4th street and the 101.
I am sure they’ll realize soon enough that cars are zooming past a bit too fast in this area and they’ll have to mitigate it.
I am beating a dead, buried, and mummified horse, but I wish things had played out differently.
Instead of building a new wing for the Fisher collection, why didn’t SFMOMA renovate the Metreon instead? Bring in a major architect and it could be an interesting building. Probably cost less than a whole new structure. Keep the movie theaters, but during the day, they could be used for art lectures and films. At night, they create revenue. This would have kept the feeling of the Yerba Buena area as a public space and arts center.
The Target store should have gone in the CityPlace project on Market Street. That would have brought a lot of foot traffic and help revive that part of the street.
Oh well….
“Two Targets for a city with an approximate population of 800,000 is very doable.”
That’s an understatement. Santa Clara County with about 3X SF’s population supports thirteen Targets, or about one target per 130,000 residents.
… So expect Target to want to build about three or four more stores within the city limits. Any guess as to the location of the next Target? I’m thinking Bayshore Blvd. just east of Bernal Hill.
“…about 3X SF’s population…”
Um, make that “about 2X”.
@jlasf
Really interesting idea – sadly generic Americans prefer shopping over art.
Target on Bayshore would be awesome.
tipster wrote:
> A lot of merchants in small corner stores
> have made a decent living selling stuff
> in SF at inflated prices. As bad as it is
> for us, they employ a lot of people and
> spend the profits locally, partly on real
> estate. Their landlords charge a lot too
> and make money off of the profits…
But don’t forget that most merchants in small corners stores “forget” to pay taxes on the cash they receive and often hire friends and family to work for cash (who don’t pay any taxes on the income or SS or other taxes). As much as many in SF hate Target in Wal Mart I don’t think that anyone thinks that Target managers are hiring friends to work for cash or that the Walton family is rolling in to town to pull cash out of the registers before it is counted…
Yea, jlasf: that horse is quite dead, very dead.
I find no logic in your thinking.
Adding ON to the existing SFmoma makes total sense, connecting all the collections into one new, very unique space.
Total winner for SF!
Sold! As one piece of a set of U.S. shopping centers, according to Andrew S. Ross:
Watch for the private equity firm, the new owner, to start implementing penny-pinching policies which degrade the overall shopping experience in order to bring in more revenue. I don’t have a concrete example, but I’m sure it’ll be noticeable in short order.
“I don’t have a concrete example, but I’m sure it’ll be noticeable in short order.”
Really? Really?? Come on, man – if you’re gonna throw out accusations, at least base them on something. Anything.
Brahma, don’t admit things like “I don’t have a concrete example”! Your point was perfectly valid, but when you qualify it like this then someone will just retort “Ha, worthless!” like Fischum did, just to pretend that THEY only contribute fact-checked irrefutable truths.
Instead, learn from the ree-luh-ters on this site who just say sh** based on nothing with no shame or apologies. That way they never have to back up anything, ever. So naive . . .
BT – don’t think those low prices come without a cost. Someone is paying for it, just not you. There was a great article in Mother Jones about the warehouse shipping contractors used by Amazon and other online retailers.:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor
I found it an eye-opener, and combine that with their fight against paying sales tax (like everyone else) and they basically are another corporate bloodsucker. I will still look for deals online, but try to find actual merchants (like REI) that run their own warehouses.
Fishchum, valid objections, but what I was doing was throwing down a marker. So I can come back later and say, “here’s a concrete example of the buyout company changing things around to generate revenue for the buyout company’s limited partners (or what have you)”, usually because the acquired company is loaded up with the debt needed to complete the buyout.
I don’t have a prediction except that it will detectable to the average consumer (using myself as a proxy for the average consumer). What kind of things do I mean? Well, we don’t even have to leave this property for an example.
In 2004, J.P. Morgan Chase’s internal private equity arm and Apollo Management put together a deal that took movie-chain operator AMC Entertainment private in a $2 billion transaction. Within three months thereafter, the price of popcorn at the theater close to tripled. I noticed this. The average consumer just wouldn’t make the connection between the increased prices and the fact that the company was recently taken private.
I read an article in one of the business mags about a month later (can’t find a link at the moment) that said AMC had to do this because the partners in the buyout loaded the company up with debt and the increased revenue was just to service that debt load.
anon, that’s good advice, thanks.
Brahma – fair enough.
Target plans to open October 14th and has started hiring:
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Target-attracts-job-seekers-for-SF-store-3777274.php