Will a Target super-store be built in Owings Mills where Wal-Mart had planned to open? Yes. No. Maybe so.
A Target attorney says yes -- its plans would better suit the community. Residents say no -- traffic created by any large retail store would be an intrusion.
Target, a Minneapolis-based retail chain, would like to open its first Maryland store by the fall of 1996 at Reisterstown Road and Dolfield Boulevard. The chain has not obtained title to the 16-acre property or submitted concept plans to Baltimore County, but hopes to soon.
The Target store would be smaller than the one Wal-Mart proposed but then dropped in October. "We're talking about 117,000 square feet, and they were talking in the 150,000-square-foot range," said G. Scott Barhight, an attorney with Whiteford, Taylor & Preston, which represents Target.
Big deal, neighbors say. "When it's 80 feet from the back of your house, it doesn't matter," said Michael R. McCann, a member of the Committee Against Target, formerly the Committee Against Wal-Mart. "The point is, a building that large does not belong there." The committee is made up of Reisterstown, Owings Mills and Glyndon residents.
Mr. Barhight said Target would have a larger buffer zone between the store and houses, and the estimated 3,500 to 4,000 more cars the store would bring in daily could only turn right to enter and leave. He added that there will be a signal light at Dolfield Boulevard and Reisterstown Road. "We think that's going to enhance the safety of access," he said.
Wal-Mart would have drawn an estimated 8,000 extra cars a day to the site, and its larger size would have pushed it closer to homes.
"We see no difference between what Wal-Mart was coming in with and what Target is," Mr. McCann said. "The traffic problems that are going to be generated are still the same."
Mr. McCann lives in Pleasant Hills, a development of about 300 townhouses next to the site. He and his neighbors say such a large retail store would be more appropriate on commercial strips like Ritchie Highway. And they plan to fight with the same vigor that he says led Wal-Mart to change its plans.
"Things are back on," he said. "What we intend on doing is battling this to the end."