Chicago trying to figure how to attract as much retail opportunity as possible

Where does Chicago go shopping?

Leaving the South Side

There’s time when it appears we don’t have much of a clue. As much of it may well depend upon which demographic we happen to have been born into – and whether retailers are all that anxious to have our business.

A PAIR OF stories in the news of late would impact the ability of us to purchase the goods that enable us to get through our lives.

For some of us, that has now become something we do on the Internet from our homes, with items shipped to our homes (or what other address they happen to find most convenient).

While others of us still prefer the concept of a physical store to shop at. Which is why interest is being paid to municipal government trying to figure out how to get Target to back of off its intensions to close two of its stores in South Side neighborhoods.

Specifically in the Morgan Park and Chatham neighborhoods, both of which are majority African-American populations. Which has some people convinced that Target is dumping those locations because they’re not interested in selling goods to black people.

AFTER ALL, IT’S not a cutback by the retailer whose fanatics like to mockingly think of it as a French-like outlet. Because Target has plans to open new stores in the Rogers Park and Logan Square neighborhoods. Along with various other locations throughout the suburbs.

But none of those are majority non-Anglo like the locations of the two stores that are to be closed.

Target supporters try to argue that the retailer will still have South Side locations. Although you have to admit, the Hyde Park neighborhood is noted most for being so unlike the rest of the South Side in so many ways – including in its racial composition.

Putting Chicago off to the side

I won’t be surprised if Target decides to merely ride it out, and figure they don’t have to do anything to change their stance on store locations.

SO IT MIGHT be in vain the city’s efforts to offer millions of dollars in tax increment finance benefits – which allow the property taxes the company pays to be put into a special fund by which they could get it back to pay for future improvements.

It might not be enough to sway Target officials, who likely will tolerate the racial rhetoric of the next few months that claims the retailer is deliberately snubbing people based on race.

Even though I’m sure they’ll claim it’s mere demographics – even though I often wonder if such talk is merely a way of covering up a desire to be more selective about how they do business with.

Not that Target is the only retail issue that has city officials concerned. There also are concerns over the second corporate headquarters that Amazon.com wants to have beyond Seattle, Wash.

THE REPORTER RUMOR mill of recent weeks says that Amazon is about to choose a site – and it ain’t Chicago.

Supposedly, Amazon is interested in the Virginia-based suburbs of Washington, D.C., and the borough of Queens in New York. Which some will try to say means they want to be in D.C. and Noo Yawk. Although it’s really more like they want to be on the fringes of those two major cities where they can escape the grittier aspects of urban life.

Which might well include people of the same types of economic demographics that Target is trying to avoid by pulling their stores out of Morgan Park and Gresham.

The key to comprehending businesses and where they choose to locate is that they usually pick locations where their self-interest is fulfilled, with the underlying idea being that the day will eventually come when their self-interests are better served elsewhere. Meaning even if Amazon.com were to pick Chicago, it’s likely the day would come when they’d decide to move elsewhere.

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Our retail habits continuously evolve – will old Carson’s become Amazon.com

It always amuses me whenever I think about retail practices (not that I think about them that often) to realize that one of the grand old spots of shopping in Chicago is now just another Target store.

The old nameplates remain ...

Which has me wondering with the news reports that Target may be purchased sometime this year by that behemoth of Internet shopping. As in Amazon.com.

DOES THAT MEAN the one-time Carson Pirie Scott flagship store on State Street will essentially become a visible sign of just how much Amazon.com has taken over the world of retail?

The idea behind the purchase, according to the Bloomberg Business News service, is that Amazon.com and Target already share a common demographic in terms of people who rely on them to purchase the goods they wish to have in life. Combining could create a sizable retail combine – albeit one not quite as big as Wal-mart.

But then again, the so-called retail experts consider that to be a separate demographic of shoppers. It’s a matter of everybody will claim they control their segment of society, and don’t really care about other groups amongst us.

But to me, the idea that the grand old department store (which had operated at various sites in Chicago since 1854 and at its current State/Madison street location since 1904) continues to stand in its architectural grandeur (designed by famed architect Louis Sullivan) but without its old retail elegance is amusing.

EVERY TIME I find myself inside the old Carson’s these days, I find myself trying to find traces of the old style – only to find that I’m in a Target barely distinguishable from the Target stores one can find anywhere else in Chicago or at various suburban locations.

If this deal does go through, will that one-time Carson’s location wind up taking on the smiling Amazon.com logo? Will it become a place people go to if they happen to be downtown, check out the goods, then return home to place the order?

... even though the classic retail businesses are long gone from State Street

I’ve seen that kind of behavior in many a Barnes & Noble bookstore, and it is one that I personally find strange. You’d think that since they’ve already made the trip to the store, they’d just buy the item right there and then!

But this is a new age now that we’re well into the 21^st Century and we now have people coming of age who weren’t even alive back on that date when the 1900s receded into the past and we moved into this era of the 2000s (is that 2-thousand or 20-hundred?).

REGARDLESS, I STILL find the old Carson’s building, along with the one-time Marshall Field’s just a couple of blocks north on State Street, to be significant landmarks.

They are points that help me personally anchor my location whenever I happen to be walking about. Yes, thinking of something as being “just a couple of blocks” from Carson’s is the way I think – even if there probably are some deluded individuals who will see the Target bullseye logo and think I’ve gone goofy.

It’s just a matter of how we think. Besides, I’m sure there will be a certain subgroup of people who have become so accustomed to the Target label on that structure that they will forever think of it that way – and will have an even younger generation think they’ve gone goofy.

“What Target? That’s Amazon.com!,” they’ll say.

OF COURSE, IF you want to live in the past and still shop at the Carson’s brand, you can always hit any of the many suburban locations that have kept that name – even though the flagship store did not.

A place to reminisce about Chicago of old. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

Just as you can still walk into what is now the downtown Chicago store of Macy’s and try to pretend it is still Marshall Field’s. Particularly if you go down to the basement level and spend all your time by the Frango mints stand. That brand has managed to outlive the company that originally created it.

Although the Amazon.com move (which previously took over the Whole Foods brand name) toward Target does have me wondering who eventually will wind up taking over the one-time Field’s.

And if we’re ultimately moving in the direction of all types of stores becoming tied together and merged into one massive entity to be known as “The Store.”

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