A “groundbreaking” ceremony was held today for a building that’s already been built but hasn’t been used recently. The former Sears store at Cross County Center in Yonkers will be the new home for a 130,000-square-foot Target store.

Elected officials joined with representatives of the open-air shopping center to mark the beginning of the transformation of the first two floors of the four-floor building. The new Target will be the chain’s first store in Yonkers and is scheduled to open next year.

The Cross County Center, owned by Marx Realty and Benenson Capital Partners, is at the intersection of the Cross County Parkway and Interstate 87. It has more than 80 stores and restaurants along with a Hyatt Place Hotel in its 1,150,000 square feet. It attracts approximately 11 million visitors a year.

“It’s a very big deal,” Craig Deitelzweig, president and CEO of Marx Realty, told the Business Journal about the Target store.

“It really speaks to the success of Cross County Center, the success of Yonkers in attracting retailers and it also really speaks to how open-air shopping centers are really the future of retail. People feel very safe going to an open-air shopping center.”

Deitelzweig said bringing in Target on a 40-year lease reflects the commitment the ownership and management of the center has to Yonkers.

He said that he expected an announcement would soon be made regarding a lease for 40,000 square feet of the remaining 60,000 square feet in the building.

“Of the remaining 20,000 square feet, we have lots of different retailers who are very interested in that space so we think it’s going to be really exciting,” Deitelzweig said.

“We also have the ability to have the roof so a restaurant could have a lot of outdoor dining out there, and it’s a very large roof, so it could be really exciting.”

Deitelzweig noted that the current owners of the center have been in place for 65 years and have worked to make it a part of the community.

“We are recommitting but we’ve always been very focused and committed on making this a really dynamic place and part of the community,” Deitelzweig said.

The center has been careful to make shoppers feel comfortable during the pandemic, he said, by providing masks for people, adopting additional sanitation protocols and making available apps enabling people to make reservations and do advance planning through the use of their personal devices.

“During this time you have to really be understanding and everyone’s sort of a little bit more flexible than they were before, not just for the tenants but for the customers as well. We just want to really think about how to make it the best experience possible and work with our tenants, our retailers, our customers, to make it the best place to be,” Deitelzweig said.

“This should really be the place that people to go after a high school graduation, to celebrate a big event. It’s really part of your life and I think that’s the future of retail and I think being an open-air center is really how that becomes critical. It’s an experience for sure.”

Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano told the Business Journal that in the past Target had wanted to come to Yonkers but was unable to work out a deal.

“They were supposed to go to Tuckahoe Road, at one point they were supposed to go to the other side of the highway here and they are opening up now in Cross County, one of the most successful malls of its type in North America,” Spano said.

“We are very aware of what’s happening in the retail market. Retail is changing. It’s been changing even before Covid.”

Spano said that in addition to sales tax and property tax revenue for the city, Target is creating about 700 jobs.

“That’s obviously huge,” Spano said. “People come here, they’re not just shopping here at Target. They’re going to go to maybe some of the local eateries. They’re going to make investments of time and money here in our city and when people do that revenues increase for us and that allows us to do the things we need to do to protect the quality of life for the people here in Yonkers.”

State Sen. Shelley B. Mayer, in speaking to the gathering before the ceremonial shovels were plunged into the pile of earth that had been brought in for the ceremony, said, “It takes a great act of boldness in this time of economic challenge to have a groundbreaking and the beginning of a brand new retail store.

“This is what positive work and energy, belief in our retail sector, belief in our community can really mean: jobs, a wonderful shopping environment that actually works and will survive, and it’s credit to the believers in Yonkers, the believers in Target and I’m a shopper in Target, and the believers in the future of retail if it’s done right and that’s what Cross County has done and will continue to do.”

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