Target Construction to Begin Soon.

The sale of 12.8 acres in Fayetteville's CMN Business Park II to Target Corp. of Minneapolis was completed Aug. 21, and construction should begin in a few weeks on a 124,767-SF Target store at that location.

Jim Irwin of Little Rock-based Irwin & Saviers would not disclose the purchase price. Irwin brokered the deal for the landowners, three sisters known collectively as Nanchar.

The Target store will be built on 9.4 acres, according to documents filed by CEI Engineering Associates of Bentonville with the Fayetteville Planning Commission. The remaining acreage may be leased to other retailers along with two 5,600-SF spaces attached to the Target building. The commission approved Target's large-scale development plan on May 14.

The building will be located at the northeast corner of Steele Boulevard and Shiloh Drive, northeast of a Kohl's department store that opened April 16.

Target said it will preserve 16.2 percent of the tree canopy on 1.7 acres of green space. That includes 3.4 percent of existing canopy and 12.7 percent replacement canopy. The city's tree ordinance requires that 15 percent of the tree canopy be preserved.

Kristin Jahnke, a spokeswoman for Target, said it takes about 10 months to build a store, so the Fayetteville Target could open in late summer 2002.

Target refers to itself as an "upscale discount retail" chain. As of July 31, the company had 1,348 stores in 46 states, including 1,019 Target stores, 265 Mervyn's stores and 64 Marshall Field's stores. For the fiscal year ended Feb. 3, Target had sales of $1.26 billion.

The Fayetteville store will be one of Target's smaller stores. Target has three store sizes: the traditional store, 125,000 SF; Target Greatland, 135,000 SF; and SuperTarget (which also sells groceries), 177,000 SF.