It's just a fucking Target
Goodfellow & Co. puts gullible Detroiters in a chokehold, apparently
Around the first few months of the pandemic while I was living in the Bay Area, I vowed to never set foot inside a Target again. At the time, the discount store — it is a discount store — rolled out curbside delivery, which meant I could order a few essentials like toilet paper and laundry detergent from an app on my phone and roll up to Target’s front door a few hours later and let an attendant put said items in my trunk. I’d be in and out of the parking lot in less than five minutes, and I saved who knows how much money by not being tempted by Target’s infamous endcaps filled with clearance-priced goods.
When I moved to New York, there were times I went inside anyway. A trip to the Verizon Store in Atlantic Center — oh, why not peruse the Target upstairs, and, whoops, here goes a pair of Original Use stonewashed jeans for only $19.99. A Christmas gift for a now-ex; I can easily get exactly what I’m looking for at the Flatbush Target, right off the train. Mom’s in town and needs a carry-on bag for the things she bought sightseeing, so let’s drop into a Queens location on our way to the Chinatown in Flushing.
None of my trips to Target as a resident of New York were mandatory. There was nothing I bought that was essential. Nothing Target sells is essential.
Knowing this, I have the same reaction to the small-format Target opening in Midtown that I did when Whole Foods opened a few thousand feet away eight years ago. It’s really not that deep. It’s a store. It will not make or break Detroit, but it is nice to have. The difference is Detroit eight years ago, and Detroit now. In those eight years, Detroit has opened, well, a lot of stores — all of which sell the same merchandise as Target.
You want fast fashion made in Bangladesh? Now you can go to H&M. You want groceries? Well, you have Whole Foods, three new Meijers to choose from, and several neighborhood grocery stores. Your prescriptions can be filled at any CVS, Rite Aid or Walgreens. You can buy toilet paper anywhere. Books? Source Booksellers, also in Midtown — or Pages Bookshop in Rosedale Park. Or get a fucking library card.
What are you going to buy at the new Target that you can’t buy anywhere else in Detroit?
If this were eight years ago, you could have made the argument that Detroit needed a Target. The city was definitely missing a one-stop shop for, say, school uniforms, motor oil and a gallon of milk. Somehow, as the city has done for years when the only Target in the city at Bel Air Shopping Center — something Crain’s mostly white and suburban staff seemed to forget about in the earliest iteration of reporting this story — closed in 2003, Detroiters have made do.
But in those eight years since Whole Foods — and to be clear, Whole Foods isn’t the milestone of a before-and-after Detroit — opened, hasn’t there been more than enough to make up for not having a Target? I don’t think anyone considering moving to Detroit would’ve let the lack of Target’s presence be a dealbreaker. As we’ve seen time and time again, people move to Detroit for cheap houses, music, the ability to practice art without much oversight (until it’s time to apply for a Kresge…or City Walls), and to be around other Black people.
Similarly, as I learned working in city hall and, well, talking to people outside Twitter, no one left Detroit because there wasn’t a Target. People left because of faltering city services, crime, bad schools, better jobs in suburbs, or to be around other Black people in Atlanta. And the commentariat is trying to pin Detroit’s success on whether or not there’s a Target in the city limits?
What cultural cachet did Target earn since 2003, when the last one was in town? They still produce a bunch of mass-marketed crap. I winced when I saw Metro Times’ — weirdly and confusingly capitalist, since we’re here — headline about being horny for…what exactly? Stand mixers that come in pastels? I winced again when I saw my dear, beloved Neighborhoods Twitter account question whether a small-format Target can support a city. Is this store alone supposed to support the entire city, when I know for a fact nobody ever questioned whether the Bel Air Target was supposed to do the same? (That the mayor’s office didn’t mention how many jobs would be coming with this new Target should answer that question, but in case I have to break it down: No, Target is not going to support all of Detroit. This isn’t an only-store-in-town town.)
Isn’t Detroit supposed to be above chain retail, anyway? Like, not in the we-don’t-need-an-Applebee’s context, but with regard to Target’s merchandise — what happened to buy local? A decade ago, places like City Bird were the city’s golden geese. Look how cool and indie and minority-owned Mama Coo’s is! That so many people were waiting with bated breath to buy a Magnolia Home vase rather than one at the Shrine of the Black Madonna lets me know that we’re not in Old Detroit or New Detroit, but rather…Elementary Detroit? The bar lowered just that quick, apparently.
But hey, at least you can take the bus to it, which is one the one high point I’ll mention about the bite-size Target that hasn’t even been built yet. Quite a few takes out there on “why Midtown?” leave out the fact that the Bel Air Target, on the far end of the eastside, wasn’t the most convenient if you, well, didn’t live on the eastside. And for all the bemoaning about whether they’ll carry Black beauty products — did we forget just that quick that The Lip Bar, a Black, Detroit, woman-owned beauty brand, has a big part of its origin story in Target? Relax. It’s just a fucking Target.
Side note: I apologize for my absence, as during my time away, I was transitioning out of my job at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, briefly panicking about finding a new one, then actually finding a new one (whew!) at the PBS NewsHour, settling there (I like it a lot!) and getting used to it, oh, and selling my first novel to a publisher? But I should be back on a semi-regular basis. Subscribing is still free.
It's just a fucking Target
Nice hot take, the headline will probably get you some angry eyeballs. But this whole piece is disingenuous. I know you understand exactly why this has been big news. It's symbolic. National retailers abandoned Detroit for years yet can be found littered across the suburbs. Opening back up in Detroit is significant for that reason.
“I don’t think anyone considering moving to Detroit would’ve let the lack of Target’s presence be a dealbreaker.”
I moved to Detroit (Cass Corridor) about 1 1/2 years ago and the lack of a Target didn’t stop me. However, I think the Target may prove to be of value to many of the people who live and work nearby, that is if and when it gets built. There is still no date for when construction will start, or when it will open.