The expansion of a Target store into an empty next-door building means fresh produce and other groceries to fill a food-shopping gap in Somerville’s Ward 2 neighborhood.
The city’s Zoning Board of Appeals approved on Wednesday the expansion of a 92,000-square- foot Target store at 180 Somerville Ave. into a vacant space next door of 34,000 square feet, making for a combined space close to the department store chain’s typical size nationwide of about 130,000 square feet.
The full-service Target grocery section is due to open next year.
“With this expansion, you’re going to get a full grocery assortment, which has never been here,” said Aaron Hemquist, a development manager at Target. “We previously had a grocery restriction from Stop & Shop, and all we could have is limited frozen stuff and dry goods – this is going to be full produce [area] that you would see at any other targets in the Boston area.”
The existing space will become sales for “everything but groceries” and the new square footage, reached by knocking down a wall, will be for food, Hemquist said. A ZBA special permit for an interior fit out of shelving and other equipment was needed because, though the expansion was proposed in 2024, the zoning code has since been updated to affect any use larger than 10,000 square feet. (Though by one way of thinking, “we’re actually not expanding anything,” Hemquist said.)
The extra space will mean fewer truck trips to the site, said Hemquist and representatives of Kimley-Horn, ann engineering, planning and design firm working with Target on the project.
To have as much sales floor as possible in the current, smaller Target required the company to maintain a remote storage area where distribution center workers would drop stuff off. There the wares would wait for small trucks from the Somerville Avenue store, which would send them “multiple trips a day just to go to that offsite back storage location to to bring product and replenish during the day,” Hemquist said. “With this expansion, we get rid of that.”
Along with a building facelift comes a flip of the parking lot – with repaving and restriping – to be perpendicular to the front of the building, which Seth Anderson of Kimley-Horn said would be safer and easier for customers to navigate. Drive-up stalls will be relocated to the west side of the parking lot, and the parking lot will get 40 trees and additional landscaping islands.
The nearest full grocery stores are each more than a half-mile away: Market Basket, on the far side of Union Square, and a Star Market on McGrath Highway in the Inner Belt neighborhood.
The traffic impacts from an expanded store weren’t seen as significant in company traffic studies, and the five voting board members approved the expansion unanimously.
Robert Schofield, a resident of Knowlton Street in East Somerville, said the expansion and new grocery option was welcome.
“We make compromises all the time in our daily lives, and one of the things that I’ve noticed that I’ve had to compromise on is good produce – it’s very difficult to get around and get good produce. Stop & Shop, albeit they do a a good job, they don’t do a terrific job, and it’s not a well-tended store. It will be a breath of fresh air to have Target offering produce. I mean, they already do a fantastic job,” said Schofield, calling himself a frequent Target shopper. “I just want to give my full endorsement.”
Target, founded in 1962 in Minnesota, has more than 2,000 stores in the United States, including 51 in Massachusetts. The Ward 2 location is Somerville’s only, but there are stores in Cambridge’s Porter and Central squares, as well as one on Salem Street in Medford.
