My take: Target and Middletown’s explosive growth
A long-rumored Target appears to be on its way to Middletown.
The town’s long-time mayor Ken Branner told DelawareOnline (subscription) that the store appears to be a “done deal,” although the company has not commented on the report and does not have Middletown on its “opening soon” list.
The likely location is a field on the edge of the town wedged in by the main highway and a sprawling town-house-filled development. That will create some walkable and bikeable opportunities for a town with a vehicle-dependent development pattern.
Marketing materials linked to the DelawareOnline piece point to a large retailer that would occupy a portion of a proposed shopping center.
Landing Target would be a feather in the cap of the pro-growth mayor of a town that has nearly 25,000 residents who have been building and buying homes despite price tags that can run in the half-a-million-dollars. Retailers and restaurant chains have quickly filled up strip centers and other available spaces.
Residents were also drawn to the affluent Appoquinamink School District, which has been opening new schools at a rapid rate.
When residents of communities around the country are polled on retailers they would like to see, the more upscale Target chain ends up high on the list. Another top entry is Trader Joe’s and sometimes Wegmans.
Branner scored another win when a Chinese pharmaceutical company recently broke ground on a manufacturing campus that could employ hundreds.
DelDOT is playing catch-up on increasingly crowded highways despite the loss of through traffic that came with the opening of the Route 301 toll road.
Middletown growth accelerated beginning a couple of decades ago when New Castle County issued a more restricted code that pushed development into more friendly confines like Middletown, where the mayor and council were perfectly fine with a version of the strip mall landscape along Concord Pike and Kirkwood Highway.
Target, despite its massive size, opens relatively few stores each year as it deals with supply chain issues and focuses on urban areas where it has been adding locations in inner suburbs and urban areas with less square footage.
Target has been bullish on New Castle County over the years and took a serious look at a site outside Newark that came with traffic issues.
The company did swoop in and built a new store at Christiana Mall a decade ago and more recently opened a store at a former Sears site at the Prices Corner Shopping Center west of Wilmington.
To the disappointment of many, The Grove development (the former College Square shopping center) is not slated to be the home of a Target. Many hoped the former Kmart space would be a good location.
Target has other stores in Dover and Concord Pike near the Delaware-Pennsylvania line.
Fast-growing Sussex County is the next likely site.
If Target takes a serious look at Sussex, it will find no end of strip development opportunities in a county that continues to gobble up farmland. – Doug Rainey, chief content officer.
