Scenes from a Mall: My wife and I took advantage of Wednesday being a non-school night (due to the MEA convention) to pile the kids in the car and make a pilgrimage to the new downtown Target store.
I must say that whatever my feelings about how the store got there, it felt exciting to be going, like those legendary, long-ago family trips to downtown department stores were supposed to feel. Even after all the controversy and StarTrib minimaps, we couldn't remember which block had the Target office building and which had the store. We chose wrong, wasting what turned out to be precious minutes tooling the one-ways back to the LaSalle ramp entrance. My first sensory impression was that the shopping carts handles feel smooth and brand new. I didn't see any of the SUV models with two child seats though. In fact, we didn't see any other children. But the store did stock diapers and the other stuff we thought we needed and some stuff we didn't but stuck in the cart anyway. You get an hour parking free on weekdays and two hours on weekends, with a $25 purchase. I overheard a 20-something laughing that she'd park free there, then return her purchase to another Target later. I suppose the lack of kids is by design, as it is across so much of downtown. That, and the spanking new cleanliness of it all, made for an eerie contrast with the experience of shopping ordinary Targets in the city and inner-ring suburbs. The downtown store shuts up at 8 p.m., an hour earlier than most Targets I think. That forced us to do about an hour's worth of shopping in 20 minutes, which meant a lot of trips up and down between the store's two floors. You can't just dart about randomly on one level like at the Quarry or Lake Street. But you get to put your shopping cart on its own escalator and ride next to it, which is a thrill. Just follow the slash/stick-figure warning and don't leave your baby in the cart for the ride. We closed the place down with a family-sized total that seemed to surprise the clerk. She's probably used to the more dainty-sized purchases of the downtown workers, and residents on either (or neither) side of their child-rearing years. As we pulled out of the ramp onto Ninth Street, I suddenly recognized the scene as the same one you saw on stepping out of the old American Rug Laundry headquarters (where I briefly temped a few years before it was felled to make way for the Target store development). It felt like living one of those then-and-now photo comparisons from Larry Millet's book. Chris Steller Nicollet Island-East Bank > From: Rosalind Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 23:09:22 -0500 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [Mpls] Strib loves Target > > http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/766280.html > > They love it a lot: > > "To say the new downtown Minneapolis Target store is a bright spot states > the obvious. The eye-popping red logo that is a ubiquitous part of our > suburban landscape now hangs on the corner of 9th Street and Nicollet Mall > -- though tastefully recessed into its new brick-and-glass building." > > As a card-carrying Targetphobe, I thought the building was nowhere near as > tacky as it could have been. Still wished I could run into Jitters after > my dental appointment, though. > > Rosalind Nelson > Bancroft > > > > > > _______________________________________ > Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy > Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: > http://e-democracy.org/mpls > _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
