Target will shut å small Bay stores
Target will close two stores in San Francisco and Cupertino after years of weak performance, despite the company seeing recordshattering overall 2020 revenue growth of l15 billion — higher than the previous 11 years combined.
The stores at 1830 Ocean Ave. in San Francisco and 19499 Stevens Creek Blvd. in Cupertino will close on June 26. The 40 fulltime and parttime workers in San Francisco and 35 in Cupertino will be offered the opportunity to transfer to other stores.
Target said the closings aren’t related to the pandemic. The company has been one of retail’s biggest winners, with sales jumping nearly 20% to l93.6 billion last year compared with 2019. Net income was up nearly a third to l4.4 billion.
“The decision to close a store is always difficult, and follows a rigorous annual process to evaluate the performance of every store in the portfolio and maintain the overall health of the business. Target remains committed to the San Francisco Bay Area and will continue to serve guests at nearby stores,” the company said in a statement
to The Chronicle.
The 17,000-square-foot Ocean Avenue Target opened in 2015 near City College of San Francisco, part of the company’s expansion of smaller size stores near college campuses. It is roughly onetenth the size of a traditional Target store. The 21,000-square-foot Cupertino store is also a smaller, urban store and opened in 2016 as part of a new housing development. The stores are closing before leases are expiring, Target said.
The company continues to expand elsewhere in the Bay Area, opening two smallerformat stores — in the South of Market area and inside a new housing project on Oakland’s 27th Street — in the past few years. Target is also tripling its size at Stonestown Galleria after the closure of Nordstrom. A massive residential expansion with 2,900 homes is proposed at the mall.
arge national retailers like Target, Walmart and Costco have seen heavy demand during the pandemic and were allowed to stay open as essential food retailers. In contrast, apparel chains and small local businesses have been decimated by public health orders, declining foot traffic and, particularly in San Francisco, a surge in burglaries.
John Mulligan, Target’s chief operating officer, said during a November earnings call that the company remains confident in smaller, urban stores, including near college campuses and residential areas.
“We remain really bullish on the smallformat stores and the opportunity in front of us there,” he said. “Dense urban neighborhoods have continued to perform very, very well. Employment centers where people have been working from home, those have also lagged a little bit the rest of the chain. But as we look forward, we continue to see great opportunities across all the different trade areas.”