This story first ran in the Aug. 1 edition of the Daily Post.
BY AMELIA BISCARDI
Daily Post Staff Writer
The Target in East Palo Alto will be shutting down on Sept 28.
East Palo Alto Mayor Antonio Lopez said the city didn’t get much advance notice but he did receive a call that they can fill the place soon with from the store manager.
This Target at 1775 E. Bayshore Road in the Ravenswood 101 Shopping Center is one of the few options for East Palo Alto to purchase groceries and pharmacy items in their city.
Lopez said that the city is speaking with the landlord, wanting to ensure replace it with is still providing that would benefit the community.
“I think that the Target had a neighborhood kind of character to it,” Lopez said. “It was more of a neighborhood store. And I think one of the things that we want to make sure that we replace it with is still providing that convenience for folks.”
In 2020 the East Palo Alto City Council discussed having developer Sand Hill Property Company add a grocery store to its proposed development at Bay Road and University Avenue. Lopez says that he expects those discussions to come up again.
Despite the store’s small square footage, it houses a CVS Pharmacy and a Starbucks.
With Target leaving, that would mean residents would only have one general pharmacy in town — Drew Center Pharmacy on University Avenue.
Target did not respond to a request for comment from the Post, but told SF Gate the closure is due to “prolonged underperformance.”
CNBC reported in September on Target’s plans to close nine stores due to theft and violence, including in San Francisco. However an investigation by CNBC revealed that there were open stores nearby with even more reported crimes.
The buildings hosting Target and Nordstrom Rack at the Ravenswood Shopping Center sold on May 20, 2021, for $53 million.
The landlord, Bayshore 1771 LLC, is a company registered in Delaware that bought the property from real estate investment company Regency Centers Corporation, according to broker JLL Capital.
The two buildings comprise 92,110 square feet of the 430,000-square-foot shopping center off Highway 101, across the freeway from the Four Seasons Hotel.
