Target #689 - Melbourne, FL

Target #T-689

2750 W. New Haven Ave. Melbourne, FL

     This Target store opened on July 22, 1992 on a site that was originally planned to be home to a Food Lion store. 1992 was a big year for Target in Florida, as that year marked the first time Target opened their very own scratch-built stores throughout the state. The Target stores opened in Florida prior to 1992 were all located in buildings that previously housed Richway/Gold Circle/Gold Triangle stores. Richway/Gold Circle/Gold Triangle was purchased by Target in 1988, marking Target's entrance into Florida. As for this particular store, it received a major remodel from its original design in 2005 to make it look like it does now.

     In today's My Florida Retail post, we're living it up old-school Target style! Here we have a 1992-built, non-P-Fresh, P04 interior Target. With the exception of the handful of Target stores still floating around with the Wavy Neon P97 interior, this is about as close to old school Target as you can get! (Especially in Florida, where any Target interior older than P04 has essentially been eradicated). As usual with Target, although this store is one of their older locations, it has been kept in good shape and is still quite pleasant to shop at. I like this particular store due to is classic Target feel. While it's not as fancy as the nearby SuperTarget in Viera, this store still does good business. This Target has a 3 mile buffer from the nearest Walmart store in each direction, in addition to the loyal following it has garnered from the tiny town of Melbourne Village located immediately behind it. 

     In his post about the abandoned Circuit City located next door, My Florida Retail contributor Cape Kennedy Retail briefly discussed this particular Target store. In today's post, we're going to focus on the Target that shares this property with that abandoned Circuit City. Located at the main entrance into the town of Melbourne Village, this Target store gets a lot of traffic from the villagers as well as people on their way to and from the nearby Melbourne Square Mall. Strangely enough, the main road into Melbourne Village is named Dayton Boulevard. If you're familiar with Target's history, you may remember that their parent company from their founding through the 90's was called the Dayton-Hudson Corporation. I've always wondered if the Dayton Boulevard name was a coincidence or if Target intentionally requested to rename the road after their (now former) parent store (as the road predated the Target by quite a long time).

     Anyway, looking toward the right side of the building, we catch a glimpse of the old pharmacy signage. Prior to Target's sale of their in-store pharmacies to CVS in 2015, this is what the exterior sign looked like. The generic pharmacy sign has since been replaced with a CVS logo, which I do not have a photo of. Just beyond those trees at the far right side of this photo is the old Circuit City, which is now the only decently preserved Circuit City building left in Brevard County.

     The exterior of this store is still fairly original to when it opened. The only significant modification made during the 2005 remodel was adding the steel beams over the entryway to house the Target logo. Previously, the Target logo was mounted on the wall to the upper right of the entryway, probably looking like this originally. I actually quite like what Target did here to mount the logo, especially how the word "TARGET" curves out on the steel beam.

     Walking into the store, the Target Cafe is immediately on the left, still in its original location. Usually the guest service counter was moved to this spot during the mid-2000's remodels Target did, but that didn't happen here. The cafe at this store consists of a Starbucks (partially chopped off on the left side of the photo) and a regular Target Cafe counter (no Pizza Hut Express or anything like that). Nothing like a good ol' bag of popcorn from the Target Cafe as you shop!

     Lastly, as Retail Retell's keen eye pointed out: "Lol... one of the old hand baskets hanging out with the new ones." It's somewhat funny seeing the two styles of baskets together like that! However, many of the photos in this post (like this one) date back to 2014. This store has since eliminated all traces of those older style handbaskets, in favor of a complete set of the modern peanut-shaped ones.

     Going beyond the cafe, we find the clothing departments. Clothing takes up the left side of the building at this store, with this view looking toward the back of the store down one of the main aisles.

     Prior to this store's remodel to the P04 decor, this store would have more than likely started out with Target's P93 decor (which looked like this). I'm not 100% sure on that though, as this store opened right around the time that decor would have first begun to appear.

    An across-the-store view, as seen from the center aisle that cuts through the clothing departments.

     With the fitting rooms behind me, here we have a look across this store's main back aisle. The men's clothing department is to my left, with shoes and baby products to my right.

     The electronics department is beginning to appear to my left.

     Looking down one of the toy aisles toward the electronics counter. I didn't get a good photo of the counter itself, although this store still has the older style electronics desk.

     This lifesize Lego minifigure wanted to say hi to everyone :) In addition to that, we also have a good look at one of the P04 era aisle signs in this photo.

     Some of the P04 neon is visible along the back wall in electronics.

     A close-up of one of the P04 half-bulleye logos.

     Here's a view down the main back aisle once again, this time looking from sporting goods and hardware back toward electronics. The seasonal department is located behind me.

     The main aisle that runs along the right side of the store can be seen here. The support poles in the middle of this aisle make it a bit awkward to maneuver here, but at least this aisle is pretty wide. The seasonal department is visible to my left.

     As usual in most non-SuperTarget stores, the housewares departments are located in the center of the hardlines side of the store.

     O Christmas Palm, O Christmas Palm, how long and skinny are your branches! Since we're still hovering around the seasonal department, I might as well use this time to showcase this Target find. During one of my Christmastime visits to this store, I saw this Christmas palm tree and thought it was funny, especially with the way is was mixed in with all the other traditional Christmas pines. However, for a truly Florida-themed Christmas, this would certainly be the perfect fit to your Christmas decor!

     Moving further down the right side wall from seasonal, grocery takes up the front right corner of this store. As I said earlier, this Target does not have the expanded grocery section, which Target calls "P-Fresh". P-Fresh adds a small selection of fresh produce, meat, dairy, and baked goods, as well as a wider variety of dry grocery items. Even though this store lacks some of the fresh food offerings of its larger counterparts, the grocery section here is still pretty generous in selection.

     Please keep freezer doors closed! There was an entire section of cases with this note taped to the doors during this visit, probably in reference to a freezer malfunction that was happening at the time.

     If this store had P-Fresh, its selection of fresh produce and groceries would be located right here. Since this store lacks those offerings, all we see here is a standard grocery aisle with a few coolers for additional refrigerated foods.

     Another view down the right side of the store, this time as seen from the front right corner.

     To complete our run around this Target store, back to the front of the building we go to find the pet supply, kitchenware, and health and beauty departments.

     Although closed for the day when I took this photo, here's what this store's pharmacy counter looked like prior to the big CVS buyout of Target's pharmacies in 2015. By 2016, CVS had their name plastered above this counter.

     Here's another photo of the pharmacy counter, which was still in the process of transitioning into CVS when I took this photo. While most of the work seemed to be complete, a banner with the Target Pharmacy logo was still covering the CVS sign.

     And here's the old Target Pharmacy counter as it appears now as CVS. Dave provided some of his insight as to why Target sold their pharmacies to CVS in the first place: 

     "Target was losing a lot of money on their pharmacies. They could not compete with the number 1 and number 2 pharmacy chains: Walgreens and CVS since Walgreens and CVS have such good buying power. Those two chains were able to get drugs for cheaper and sell them at a greater profit. Target was way behind and their profit level was so low. Target was losing money on their pharmacies. Target wouldn't be able to make a profit now since they would have to start from scratch and rebuild their entire pharmacy chain and try to obtain drug contracts, and this time they would get even worse deals on drugs. It is sort of a no going back sort of thing, unless Target wanted to go into serious debt.

      The reason for a pharmacy is to attract customers into the store who would otherwise go to a drugstore or supermarket. With a CVS pharmacy inside of a Target, Target still attracts customers into the store while CVS deals with any up and down money losses on drugs. Independent pharmacies are dying out and being destroyed by the big drugstore chains. Target was being killed, so they decided to just cut their losses and give up to the big drugstore chains.

     CVS makes their money by their CVS Health Insurance side. Target didn't own any insurance plans and didn't get this source of profit.

     The entire purpose of Walgreens buying Rite Aid was to takeover Rite Aid's insurance plan business which makes tons of money."

     Here's a close-up of the pharmacy counter, as it looks now as a CVS Pharmacy.

     The signage for the pharmacy can be seen here from the main aisle. Instead of using a new sign, the original canoe-shaped P04 sign was retrofitted to showcase the CVS logo where the generic pharmacy department sign was once displayed.

     The old pharmacy sign can be seen in this photo.

     Returning to the front of the store, here we see the checkstands. This store has 14 registers total - 10 full service lanes and four seldom-used express lanes, which is about average for a non-Super Target from what I've seen.

     A random photo from amongst the checklanes, looking toward the express registers and the Cafe in the background.

     TEGRAT. I took this photo as I walked out of the store one day, thinking this was a neat perspective to showcase the back of the "TARGET" sign. 

     Here's one last look at the front of this store as we begin to finish up this post...

     Pictured here is a rather recent addition to this Target store: Drive Up lanes. In late 2017, Target rolled out their Drive Up service as a regional test to stores in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. With the test proving successful, Target expanded the Drive Up program in April 2018 to include all stores in Texas and Florida, as well as select locations in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, with plans for the Drive up service to be available at most Target locations by the end of 2018. Target’s Drive Up program is very similar to Walmart’s Curbside Pickup (well, technically Sam’s Club’s Curbside Pickup in that linked photo) and a variety of similar programs being offered by other retailers, where a store employee runs a purchase pre-ordered online to one’s vehicle, without the customer ever having to step foot in the store if they don’t want to. Programs like this seem to be one way retailers are trying to adapt to online shopping trends to make in-store shopping more convenient. Target's Drive Up lanes certainly aren't as fancy as the covered parking spaces that Sam’s Club installed for their curbside service at the previously linked photo, but hopefully this program is successful for Target!

     To finish off this post, we'll conclude with a photo that one could only get right here on Florida's Space Coast. If you look closely above the streetlamp, you can see a rocket blasting off toward space, rising high above the Melbourne Target store. I thought it was neat how I timed my Target trip to coincide with this rocket launch. I don't remember what launch this was in particular (as there are so many of them), but it's still a cool photo nonetheless, and a photo that really embraces the meaning of My Florida Retail!

So until we can blast off into the next post,

AFB