This doesn’t actually fit with any of the Targets I go to in NYC. There are a lot of small Target stores in Manhattan, including very dense urban areas like Times Square, Hell’s Kitchen, UWS & 34th St. They have all changed their suburban style to fit the location, having no parking (obviously), being much smaller, and all located several levels underground.
And the few full-size Targets (Riverdale, Brooklyn, Harlem, etc.) have the doors right at the street (or an escalator up to the 2nd floor), you don’t have to walk through parking to go inside. I am not sure if there is even any parking at Atlantic Terminal.
Part of it is the space , I think - a few of the Targets I know of in NYC are either right on the street or on multiple levels in a mall. And almost every Target in the NYC area is much smaller than the Walmart supercenters I’ve been to that combine a full- sized supermarket with a full-sized discount store.
But a lot of it is that Walmart has a different reputation than Target. You have the issues with how Walmart treats workers and Target is perceived to treat them better and there is definitely a perception that Walmart will put the local competition out of business while there isn’t that perception about Target. Walmart also seems to do more/different “stores within the store” than Target . I’ve seen Starbucks in Target, but there seems to be a bigger range at Walmart and me buying a drink at the Starbucks in Target might be an impulse purchase that doesn’t affect any other coffee shop , getting my hair cut in the salon at Walmart does mean I won’t be going to another salon.
But possibly the biggest issue is the products- people will shop in Target who refuse to go to Walmart because they perceive Walmart to lower quality or not to look as nice as the products sold at Target.
I wasn’t specifically speaking of only Target there - it was about big box stores in general including Target ( and Home Depot, Dicks, Best Buy etc) . But there are Targets in a sea of parking at Ceasar’s Bay Bazaar and Gateway Center in Brooklyn and also the one on 20th Ave in Queens.
Point being, if a particular company wants to implement their suburban plans in a city, they have to A) find a large enough piece of property to do so, B) get it cheap, and C) work their numbers to account for (potentially) higher wages, theft, and security. That’s though if sales are lower. Also in multi-tenant buildings like high rises, there’s the additional issue of multiple entrances and exits which can exacerbate theft and require more security.
I went to a two-story Target in 2007 when I visited my sister in San Diego. Their escalators had a special escalator in the middle for carts (and no, you couldn’t put strollers or wheelchairs on them).
Anyway, I just came from YouTube where some people are talking about a news story about this. One can imagine that a lot of them are probably wearing pointy white hats, and my question ("So, what do you folks plan to do about it?) will probably draw crickets.
ISTR that someone in Buffalo, NY tried to “solve that problem” not too long ago, and before that someone in El Paso, TX and stating this outside of Tor might get law enforcement veering in their directions.