ground breaking
By Judy Z. Ellett

Making the Earth Move
Target in Topeka

Getting Target off to a good start in Topeka are (l to r): Doug Kinsinger, president and CEO Greater Topeka Chamber of Commerce/GO Topeka; Kris Robbins, president and CEO Security Benefit Group and chairman of GO Topeka, Sen. Sam Brownback; Jim Ryan, CEO Ryan Companies; Gov. Bill Graves; Mitch Stover, senior vice president of distribution services for Target; Lt. Gov. Gary Sherrer; Vic Miller, county commissioner and chairman of JEDO; Mayor Butch Felker.

Topekans love their Heartland Park Topeka in the south part of town—this racetrack is as dear to them as the Kansas Speedway is to Kansas Citians. Thursday is drag night at HPT, where local fans can race everything from muscle cars to station wagons down a world-famous quarter-mile strip. But soon south Topeka will hear the rev of a different kind of engine. It will hear the rumble of bulldozers.

Just a couple of miles from HPT, at S.W. 57th Street and U.S. Highway 75, sit 143 acres of prime real estate that soon will become a Target distribution center. On Friday, July 19, Gov. Bill Graves, Lt. Gov. Gary Sherrer, Mitch Stover of Target and over 200 others came to watch the ‘dozers break ground for that center. This is the biggest thing to hit Topeka since…well, since the racetrack.

In truth, this is one of the largest development projects in the city’s history, according to Doug Kinsinger, president and CEO of Greater Topeka Chamber of Commerce/GO Topeka. Target Corporation’s plans for a 1.3 million-square-foot distribution center will mean 650 new jobs. Although Target declines to give figures for cost of construction, the total capital investment in the project is estimated to be in excess of $80 million.

In order to prove to Target that this was the place to be, Topeka and Shawnee County offered an incentive package totaling roughly $18 million. A large chunk of the money will come from Shawnee County as a 10-year property-tax exemption. Another $1.5 million will come from the City of Topeka for road improvements in the commerce park where Target will be the first tenant.

One of the most unusual pieces of the incentive package, however, is $1.5 million raised from a one-fourth cent economic development sales tax. Passed in November of 2000, the tax won’t begin collecting until Jan. 1, 2003, but the taxing authority agreed to advance funds to pay for the land on which the Target will sit. Kinsinger says Topeka is one of the few communities in the Midwest that has such a sales tax to "seed" economic development opportunities.

While other municipalities may have to ponder long and hard about whether the economic benefits of incentives outweigh the costs, the Topeka Chamber of Commerce is not concerned about the return on the city’s investment in Target. The chamber calculates the community will see a payback on the $3 million going into road improvements and land in less than three months in the form of payroll to citizens.

Those potential workers are another reason Target chose Topeka as the site of the new distribution center. According to Brie Heath, a spokeswoman for Target, the company believed this location would yield the greatest number of skilled team members. "We’ve had a long relationship with the community," Heath says. "The people and Topeka are a perfect fit for us for our business needs—they’re great."

Those 650 team members will stay busy. Over 45 million cartons of merchandise pass through a distribution center each year—the cartons are of such size and magnitude that, laid end to end, they would circle the globe five times. To give an idea of how large a structure has to be to handle that kind of traffic, the center will be larger than Topeka’s West Ridge Mall. There will be enough concrete on the building to pave 25 miles of two-lane highway.
Currently Target has 15 distribution centers in 14 states, each serving an average of 85 to 90 stores. More centers like the one in Topeka will be necessary, though, as Target continues its pace of growing at 100 stores a year. In terms of sales, it has moved behind Wal-Mart as the second-largest discount retailer in the country.

Topekans are glad to be beneficiaries of that growth as they wait eagerly for the opening of their new Target distribution center in the summer of 2004. But for now, they’re ready to rumble.