Target plans to open its first store on Outer Banks ‘in the next year’
The building that housed North Carolina’s last Kmart store will find new life as a Target “in the next year.”
Construction is underway on the much-anticipated 80,000-square-foot store at 1901 N. Croatan Highway in Kill Devil Hills. Target purchased the building in February, after confirming plans last fall for a store at the old Kmart site.
The Kmart closed in April 2020 after a 30-year run as one of two big box retailers on the Outer Banks, sharing the market with Walmart in Kitty Hawk. Kmart was popular with tourists for its beach shop and survived 15 years worth of Sears and Kmart store closures across the country before the ax fell. It was North Carolina’s last Kmart store.
Target originally planned to tear down the aging building, but later said it would remodel the existing store, which sits on a 14-acre plot owned by the Wright Company Inc. of Virginia Beach. Transformco, a holding company for Sears and Kmart properties, announced the sale of the building in January. Construction began in early November.
Target officials have revealed little about the new store, but confirmed that work is underway.
“I can confirm Target has plans to open a store at Kill Devil Hills in the next year,” Target spokesman Anthony Thomas said in an email. “As we get closer to opening the e store, we’ll have more specific details to share — including how the shopping experience will be tailored to serve local guests and the grand opening date.”
Norfolk real estate mogul Joan Dalis, who died in 2019, was president of the Wright Co. Inc., owner of the Kmart property fronting U.S. 158, the main thoroughfare on the Outer Banks. Her brother is now the property owner. Dalis may be best known for her investments in Ward’s Corner, a
Norfolk shopping center built in 1947 at the northeast corner of the shopping district.
The Kill Devil Hills store will be smaller than typical Target stores, which average about 130,000 square feet. Since 2016, the Minnesota-based retailer has opened several small-format stores, some as small as 12,000 square feet. The smaller stores are often built in urban areas and near college campuses, where a traditional Target doesn’t fit and offer “assortments curated specifically for these communities,” the corporation said on its website.