Target on Foster Ave to include Starbucks, CVS and possible liquor section

by BRIAN NADIG

A “small store” Target, which will include a Starbucks Coffee and a CVS Pharmacy, is scheduled to open in October at the new Edens Collection shopping center at 4631 W. Foster Ave.

Details of the store’s opening were announced at a May 28 virtual community meeting hosted by Alderman Samantha Nugent (39th). She held the meeting to get feedback on Targets’s request to have a liquor moratorium on new packaged goods licenses in the immediate area lifted.

The store will measure about 45,000 square feet, which is about “one-quarter to one-third” the size of full-size Target stores, said Zack Kartak, a senior development manager with Target.

The small-store concept is designed so that “residents should not have to leave their neighborhood for basic goods and services,” Kartak said. The store will offer groceries, beauty products, home goods and apparel and accessories, and the store director will have the authority to adjust the assortment based on customer feedback, he said.

In addition, pickup and drive-up services will be offered at the store, allowing customers to pick up online orders there.

The store’s liquor products would take up “slightly more than 1 percent” of the store and be located primarily in one aisle, with beer in a cooler on one side and wine and spirits on the other side, according to Kartak. He added that Target was aware of the moratorium, which prohibits it from applying for a packaged goods license, prior to signing a lease for the site.

The moratorium, which does not apply to incidental liquor licenses for restaurants,  could be reinstated after one year if it were to be lifted, Nugent said. Under the law a lifting of a liquor moratorium must be in place for at least one year before it can be reinstated.

During that one year, it is possible that another business at the center could apply for a packaged goods license, and after the moratorium were reinstated, those businesses which already had applied and received their license would be grandfathered in, Nugent said.

Kartak said that Target would be open to a “plan of operation,” which could restrict the hours for liquor sales, prohibit the sale of certain items and mandate the maximum size of the liquor section. The plan would become a condition of the store’s liquor license.

One resident expressed concern that the sale of cold beer would facilitate the drinking of alcohol at nearby forest preserves, and many of the questions asked from residents were about other aspects of the center, including graffiti issues there.

Nugent said that the developer is aware of the graffiti problem. She added that other confirmed tenants for the other former manufacturing site are Ross Dress for Less and LA Fitness.

Representatives from the Mayfair Civic Association and North Mayfair Improvement Association participated in the meeting.