Target is listed as the “featured anchor” on a marketing flyer for North Macon Plaza, a 400,000-square-foot shopping center at Bass Road and Starcadia Circle, next to Interstate 75.
It’s being developed by Macon-based Fickling Co. and Atlanta-based Cousins Properties.
Even though a photo of a Target store is shown on the first page of the flyer and the retailer’s name and trademark bull’s-eye logo are shown on an attached shopping center site plan and aerial map, Fickling and officials with Cousins or Target would not confirm the retailer is coming to the center.
“We are allowed to put out site plans with a retailer’s name on it, but we can’t confirm anything,” Fickling President and CEO Roy Fickling said. “I’m not allowed to say anything about what retailer might go there. We have to have a lease signed, a commencement date set and the retailer has to give permission (to release the name).”
Mike Cohn, executive vice president of retail investments, leasing and asset management for Cousins, also declined to discuss potential tenants for the 26-acre site. The property is across Bass Road from the entrance to Bass Pro Shops.
The site plan shows the potential Target building would be 128,100 square feet. Other buildings indicated on the site plan — none of which show retailer names — range in size from 29,388 square feet to 4,200 square feet.
The trade area shown on the marketing flyer reaches from Barnesville to the west, Monticello to the north and east to Milledgeville. It also lists the price range of homes in north Bibb County and in south Monroe County.
In October 2008, Target spokeswoman Erika Svingen said Target — which already has a store in Eisenhower Crossing shopping center in Macon — is “looking and analyzing opportunities in the Macon area. … Target has actually not closed on any land in the area,” she said.
This week, a company spokeswoman declined to discuss the possibility of another store in the Macon area.
Target’s 125,400-square-feet store at Eisenhower Crossing was an original anchor in that center when it opened in 2001. The company currently operates 1,762 Target stores in 49 states, according to its website.
In July 2007, Drury Inn Suites was approved by the Macon-Bibb County Planning Zoning Commission for a 144-room hotel on Starcadia Circle near I-75. So far, construction of the six-floor building has not begun on what would be the first Drury Inn in Macon. At that time, a company executive said construction was expected to begin within the next couple of years.
When contacted this week, Joe Pereles, vice president of development for Drury Inn, could not say when the hotel would be built.
“Our Macon development is on hold for the time being,” Pereles said in an e-mail.
Fickling said in June that while the bottom fell out of the commercial real estate market during the recession, recently major retailers were “just starting to gear back up.”
“We’ve made very good progress and everything is back on track now,” Fickling said. “Right now we’re planning on a 2013 opening (at North Macon Plaza). That would mean we need to get leasing done within nine months to a year for us to make that schedule.”
Information from Telegraph archives was used in this report. To contact writer Linda S. Morris, call 744-4223.