Posted on 07/02/2021 9:15:03 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
When Target announced that it was opening a store in Mondawmin, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Baltimore, a city struggling with crime and poverty, it seemed like a ticket to a turnaround.
And from the start, it was a practical success and a point of community pride. The store, which opened in 2008, carried groceries, operated a pharmacy and had a Starbucks cafe — the only one in this part of Baltimore’s west side.
People came from across the city to shop there, helping to soften the Mondawmin area’s reputation for crime and the looting that followed protests over the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, who was fatally injured while in city police custody. As an employer, Target seemed to cater to the community’s needs, making a point of hiring Black men and providing an office in the store for a social worker to support the staff. Elijah Cummings, the congressman from Baltimore, was known to shop there.
But in February 2018, with almost no warning or explanation, Target closed the store.
Residents, especially those without cars, lost a convenient place to shop for quality goods. And a marker of the community’s self-worth was suddenly taken away.
“To open a store like Target in an African American neighborhood gave this area legitimacy,” said the Rev. Frank Lance, pastor of Mount Lebanon Baptist Church in Mondawmin. “When the store closed, it was like saying, ‘You are not worthy after all.’”
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
Democrat held territory is Hell
Butt, butt, butt they’re still gonna pony up buhzillion$ right?
Target is exactly like all of the virtue-signaling corporations.
Their culture-cleansing ultimately surrenders to the financial bottom line.
Without notice? What was the theft rate in the store?
I would love to see the employee and “customer” theft numbers—even though the “reporter” has no interest in such “racist” things like relevant facts.
One of the first big waves of protests over his death occurred at the Mondawmin Mall. Protesters began throwing rocks at police officers, and the mall was looted. Some students from Frederick Douglass High School — across from the mall and the alma mater of civil rights giant Thurgood Marshall, the first Black man to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court — were caught up in the melee.
Target was spared serious damage. But for a time, many shoppers, both Black and white, stayed away from the store, recalled Johnson, who now works for the Postal Service.
“Mondawmin already had a bad rap with out-of-towners,” he said.
Shoppers eventually returned to the Target in Mondawmin, he said. But he noticed that the city’s other Target store, which had opened in a trendy area near the harbor in 2013, was getting more popular.
In November 2017, Mosby, then a state lawmaker, got a call from a resident whose family worked at the store: The Target in Mondawmin was shutting its doors in a few months. “I thought it was a just a rumor at first,” Mosby said.
Some residents and neighborhood leaders were told that the store struggled with high rates of theft, known in the retail industry as “shrinkage.” But Ali, the store’s former manager, said, “That was untrue,” at least while he worked there. The store met its profit and shrinkage goals during his four years as manager, which ended in 2012, years before the store closed.
Still, Ali, now the executive director of a youth mentoring group, acknowledged challenges that he said were unique to a store in a “hyperurban area.”
A significant amount of inventory was once damaged in a fire in a storage area next to the store, and the company had to spend $30,000 a month for an armed Baltimore police officer to keep watch, he said.
Now where will they go for their unisex bathrooms?
In a lot of cases, I can tell if I’m in a good neighborhood if there’s self checkout. All the stores around here in bad neighborhoods never got them.
Your worth should r be coming from whether a big multi national corporation located in your neighborhood....
Sounds to me like there is huge opportunity for those that live in the neighborhood to open their own businesses...
That would show your true worth reverend
Businesses are in business to make money. If they aren’t making money then they go out of business.
But Target=Capitalism. Capitalism bad. Give em what they are asking for. Free cheese and covid shots
Wait. If we are going to have racial equity now, does this mean that I can just help myself to anything at Target that I want? That whites can act like other races?
On the other hand I have no desire to start cheating on my wife, abandoning my children and driving around drinking MD2020 and shooting up the neighborhood. Add in Asian equity and I’ll have to drive around at 20 under the speed limit.
...who are tired of getting ripped off just like everybody else... Get woke, go broke.
Some people just can't have nice things. The modern black demo can't even keep a Chinese s**t-house like TARGET.
Or... what happens when you raise and subsidize an entire generation of illiterate, incapable, fatherless morons.
Well, when your store is the epicenter of shoplifting and local authorities don’t prosecute anyone for any of it, you can only write off those losses for so long.
Time to pack yo’ sh*t and move.
Same things happen when grocery stores are strong armed into opening in certain communities. Pretty soon the shoplifting becomes so bad the store closes and a food desert is created.
That's right. They weren't worthy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.