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The store, called City Target, will lease space in the Sullivan Center at 1 S. State St., which has been empty since Carson Pirie Scott closed its flagship department store in 2007. Target plans to open the store next year. The urban format, smaller than the typical Target store, will offer fresh food, apartment essentials and clothing. It will mark the Minneapolis-based discount chain’s 10th store in Chicago and create about 200 jobs. Target will lease 124,000 square feet over two floors, but only 54,000 square feet will be selling space, the company said. The retailer, known for its cheap chic, has been in talks for more than a year to lease space at the landmark Sullivan Center at State and Madison Streets. Mayor Richard Daley was on hand as the agreement was announced at the site of the new store. The city has poured $24.4 million in tax-increment-financing to help restore the Louis Sullivan building, which also houses offices. Chicago-based developer Joseph Freed & Associates, the building’s owner, has invested another $190 million in the national and Chicago historic landmark in the last decade. “I applaud Target for bringing this urban store concept to Chicago, as well as the new jobs and economic opportunity this store will create,” Daley said. “Target will be an important addition to State Street, one of Chicago’s most important retail centers, and will be located in one of city’s most architecturally significant buildings.” “State Street’s not just State Street,” the mayor said, while standing amid ornate columns in the otherwise-empty first floor of the Sullivan Center. “It’s Michigan Avenue, it’s Wabash, it’s Dearborn, it’s Wacker, it’s Clark, it’s Roosevelt Road. It’s all of it. It’s not — it has to be more than just one street, and that’s what it is. I mean, everything’s connected.” “The core of the city is the key,” Daley said. “If you don’t have a core of a city, most cities fail.” The State Street store would be in keeping with the discount chain’s recent strategy to push into urban cores with smaller stores. Target recently signed deals to open a 70,000-square-foot store in the heart of Seattle and a 100,000-square foot store in a shuttered Macy’s in downtown Los Angeles. Those stores are slated to open in 2012. “We look forward to preserving this Chicago treasure and blending in with the building’s aesthetic, said John Griffith, executive vice president, property development at Target. “A hallmark of Target is our flexibility in store design.” To that end, Griffith said the shoppers should be able to do “50 to 60 percent” of their grocery shopping at the new store. “But there’s still a variety of things, from fresh baked goods, or a butcher, or fresh seafood, things of that nature, that she’ll go elsewhere to satisfy those needs,” he said. The urban focus of the store will mean some products found at most Target outlets will not be at the State Street location, Griffith said. “You think about the needs of the city residents, by and large are the people commuting back and forth by train. What are the things they are really able to utilize at home that perhaps out in the suburbs you don’t?” Griffith said. “You think about a lawn and patio set. There’s no room on a 3-foot by 5-foot balcony for these gigantic things you see in the suburbs.” As for Target’s iconic red bull’s eye, the retailer is still working out the details of incorporating its logo while still respecting the building’s historic status. Tribune reporter John Byrne contributed to this story.
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