Local & State Headlines

Target requests traffic light

• Target officials say they want a traffic light at the entrance to the Albany retail store.

Barbara Rivera Holmes

ALBANY — The inconvenient and somewhat tricky entrance/exit to Albany’s Target store could prove to have negative financial implications for the city and county.

Andrea Schruijer, vice president of the Albany-Dougherty Economic Development Commission, said Wednesday that the agency is seeking ways to make Target’s Dawson Road store more hospitable for the Minneapolis, Minn.-based retailer.

“Target is unhappy in Dougherty County. They want a red light,” Schruijer said.

Installing a traffic light and carving a cut-through between the Albany Square plaza and Target’s parking lot would cost about $160,000, said James Taylor, assistant city manger for public services. The estimate and feasibility study were conducted by the city’s engineering department.

“Engineering has agreed that both are doable,” he said.

In earlier conversations, Taylor said, it was thought that the stretch of Dawson Road (Business U.S. Highway 82) facing Target was under the jurisdiction of the state Department of Transportation.

However, further research by former engineering director Bob Alexander revealed that it “is not a state route at that point,” Taylor said Wednesday evening. “The city could approve doing it.”

Taylor said officials have not heard back from Target.

“ ‘We’re willing to go do this for you if you stay,’ ” Schruijer said of local leadership’s commitment to keeping Target in Albany. “We’ve initiated that conversation to talk to them (Target) and show them what we can do to keep them here.”

Asked if Target would relocate elsewhere in the metro Albany area, she said, “It is a possibility. We’re always looking down the road.”

A message left Wednesday afternoon by The Herald at Target’s corporate office was returned, but staff were initially unable to comment.

Sales tax benefits aside, Target contributed $133,467 in property, inventory and equipment taxes to Dougherty County’s coffers for calendar year 2007, said Bill Watson of the Albany-Dougherty tax department.

The county’s 2007 revaluation increased Target’s property taxes, paid for by Dayton Hudson Corp., to $97,994, a difference of $18,565 over ’06 taxes of $79,430. The tax bill for ’05 was $79,507. Inventory and equipment taxes for 2007, 2006 and 2005 were $35,473, $39,190 and $38,814, respectively.

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