We’ve received several questions about this in recent hours – people wondering if the Westwood Village Target is one of the two Seattle stores the company is closing, especially considering the recent expansion of locked shelving for many items in the store. Answer: NO – this store is NOT on the closure list. Here is the official Target announcement about closures – the Seattle stores it’s shutting down are in Ballard and the U-District.
After reading the article online, I immediately came here… Thank you, WSB!
WSB, you’re awesome! I just saw the news about Target and was going to their website to see if Westwood Village was on the list. Thought I’d check the Blog first, and you already had the answer! Last time I was at Westwood Target a few weeks ago, many every day products were under lock and key. It really changes the shopping experience, especially when they don’t hire more staff to man the floor so you can actually get the products you need. People, stop stealing please! It’s not even why we can’t have nice things, it’s now why we can’t have the basics, like soap and shampoo. Which might actually go hand-in-hand with the City asking us to take fewer showers. Just leave the deodorants and colognes alone!
I can’t believe some of the theft I’ve seen there lately. They’re getting very bold about it. I’ve seem people fill up carts and just walk out the door. Once I saw one of the employees say something to one of the shoplifters and they told him to f*** off right to his face as they were walking out.
It’s not lately. They did that 20 years ago too. The theft thing is such a cop out. Downtown and West Seattle have (and have for a long time had) way higher theft than Ballard or U Village. Just admit to your investors you’re closing low-performing stores in neighborhoods that don’t want discount stores.
Just to be clear, the U-District Target is on the Ave, and I would think students very much appreciate having a discount store there. Both locations that are closing are smaller stores, and could very well have a higher percentage in theft.
Yes it is lately!! I have lived right by Westwood Village for 2 decades and have shopped there for the same amount of time.The amount of theft I’ve seen at QFC, Rite-Aid, Target, and now Ross is insane!99% of the time I go to WWV now I’m guaranteed to see someone shoplifting and the level of brazenness is astounding.Groups of school kids walking into QFC nonchalantly, grabbing stuff off the shelves and just walking out is an every time event I go there around 2:30-3:00. People walking out with carts so full of stolen product stuff is literally dropping on the ground. People continually walking into Rite-Aid grabbing cases of beer and walking out. I saw three people shoplifting at Target in a span of being in there for about 15 minutes. Watched a guy walk out of Ross with so many jackets in his arms I don’t think he could have carried any more. Never mind the every day shoplifting I see there. All the years I’ve lived near and shopped at WWV, I have never seen the amount of brazen theft I’ve seen in the past couple of years. Then you can look at Home Depot and see now everything is in lock down and you have to be escorted to the cashier to buy anything over a few bucks. Theft is out of control everywhere. We were downtown and my wife wanted Tylenol for a headache, so we went to a drug store and it was under lock and key. QFC has their ice cream under lock and key… ice cream!!
The theft I’m most mad about is wage theft. Target needs to pay their workers!
All 4 markets that are losing Target stores have a lot in common. We need to think about that.
No. Don’t reflect. Double down.
Target isn’t reacting to anything happening in these areas. They’re doing this on purpose because of big bad capitalism. Just like Rite Aid and Bartells. We need to force them to stay because they’re not solving the problems in the community, they’re contributing to them – we should tax them for leaving.
They’re free to go. I grew up in Minneapolis as a child shopping at Target. I stopped shopping there during covid when they monitored your every move starting at the door. I won’t shop at a store that I can’t drop things in my cart and go. Not waiting 10 minutes per item for an employee to show up.
Sad something so absurd and meant as utter sarcasm can be read as believable. oh man!
Rite Aid isn’t a good sarcastic example to bring up. Literally gutted by insiders and shareholders, and is being sued for being a crucial player in the opioid epidemic. All due to capitalistic incentives. You could probably draw a line between Rite Aid, increased drug use, and the retail crime happening now.
Nor surprised about the Ballard Target. That is the strangest Target I have ever set foot in.
Target can be such a great store. The ones I’ve seen in Texas are huge and pristine. People go to shop at them and then leave. The ones around here are smaller, unattended, and filled with loitering teenagers (dozens of them!). Is it possible these kids need more indoor places to hang out? Underage clubs, rec rooms, affordable restaurants (not fast food), and such?
I disagree. That is the only accessible grocery store for people who live downtown.
I did wonder, but only for the 5 seconds it took to load the blog. I literally shook my head and told my dog: “of course WSB is already on it.” We don’t deserve you, WSB!
If it was about theft and crime they’d close the downtown location. I think it’s an excuse to distract investors from poor performance. That’s a common lie that Walgreens and a few other retailers use.
I doubt they would be investing in locked cabinets and security guards to distract investors. Have you been to Target lately? You can’t even buy toothpaste without opening a locked cabinet. Organized retail crime is a huge problem for brick and mortar. Just another thing killing the local shopping experience and encouraging online only.
It’s just a matter of time before they leave downtown too. I’ve never seen so much plywood as a storefront. We live in a city that has a crisis for everything, businesses appear to be on their own.
When was this? Interesting as I was just at downtown Target (4:45pm Tue 9/26/23). Walked along the entire outside (2nd Ave, Union, then Pike) saw no plywood. Didn’t see any plywood in grocery section or on floor 1. Maybe I missed it?.
And what about employees? The ones trying to unionize…those are the Targets that closed. There’s tons of stories on this and this is part of the story: https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/10/target-directs-managers-prevent-workers-from-unionizing
Oh, please. Target is only closing 9 stores out of over 1950. That’s less than 1% of their locations. There are Target stores with lower sales but also much lower theft.
Being part of the bottom <1% should be an indication of what a (&@? hole Seattle has to be to have two Targets to close. I guess we are 50% less (&@??¥ than SFO but is that really a consolation prize we want to win? We are second worst! YAY! Team hug 🤗
Well, when you put it that way, yeah. And that logic matches my experience in my travels.
Not really. In most markets, Target (like WalMart) has few competitors. Here not so much, so the Targets don’t perform as well as they do when people have a choice. Not rocket science.
Exactly! This is just capitalism failing per usual. Nothing to see here. Just like Taco time using “burglary” to cut costs. This is a common lie Big Businesses use. I wish the Times would stop just echoing corporations’ lines and do their own a dual investigative journalism. It’s union busting. Target is the criminal here.
Nice rant. Care to put some, you know, facts in with your rant to support your dubious thesis? We’re all ears to read your “evidence” of Target’s criminality … crickets chirping …
“Target is the criminal here.” Dismissing the huge amount of open retail theft doesn’t make your point about corporate greed. Both are bad and both should be addressed.
Just an FYI that things like deodorant and laundry detergent are ALSO locked up at other Target locations, as well. Went to the Factoria location (Bellevue) and it’s the same there, so isn’t JUST a west Seattle thing (assuming most people know this, but I know we sometimes become fixated on things that seem to *only* be happening in West Seattle and spiral lol). Also, just an FYI to anyone able, that ordering online for in-store pick up is super easy and costs nothing and then you don’t have to deal with waiting for someone to open the cases. I do this for literally everything that I routinely get and it saves so much time. Plus the line for pick up is almost always a million times shorter than the lengthy lines that often exist. Or you can just have them bring it to your car, if you have one :)
Or just order online for delivery. $35 minimum I think. I do it all the time and it usually beats Amazon delivery because they use brick and mortar as warehouse. Getting toilet paper delivered to your front door. Imagine that in 2020! Some items ineligible for delivery but if you schedule them for store pickup in same order they count toward your $35 minimum. Target rocks!
But keep voting for politicians who side with lawbreakers, drugs addicts and thieves and our neighborhood Target may not last.
Only a matter of time, shoplifting and organized theft has multiple impacts on all of us.
If a retailer closes a store that shoplifters are hitting hard, won’t they just move their thefts to a nearby store that is still in business? it’s called whack-a-mole.
From the NYT article covering the national story. Pretty sure this has nothing to do with theft. If you read the whole article it also helpfully points out that retailers happen to cite theft as a bigger problem during economic downturns when they are having other financial problems, whether or not it has increased, and don’t actually release the amount of retail theft they are experiencing at any given time so they don’t actually have to back up their statements ever and can just say whatever they want. (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/26/business/target-store-closures-theft.html):
“On Tuesday, the National Retail Federation released its annual survey of big brands, which found that the average rate of shrink — the industry term for the value of merchandise that disappears from stores without being paid for, through theft, damage and inventory tracking mistakes — increased to 1.6 percent of sales in 2022, from 1.4 percent in 2021. The average rate of shrink was 1.6 percent in 2019 and 2020.”
“Thirty-six percent of shrink comes from theft, according to the survey, while 29 percent of it is attributed to employee theft. Twenty-seven percent came from process, control failures and errors, according to the survey.”
So, they’re basically telling us to reject the evidence of our eyes and ears.
So critical thinking question: “If they can cite theft as a bigger problem in economic downturns, and don’t actually release the amount of retail theft they are experiencing at a given time”, wouldn’t that mean the results are just as easily unreliable because they wouldn’t want to scare their investors? I mean, with that logic, making a claim that they’re saying there’s more theft when there isn’t (evidently proving people witnessing it wrong), is the exact same as a claim they’re saying there’s no theft when there is (which could invalidate the stat you provided). Just a longwinded observation.
But their own lobbying organization’s statistics say that their report of increased theft is not accurate. Here’s what is accurate. 1) Sales are down. 2) Theft as a percent of total current sales is stable. 3) Profits are down. Are you going to honestly say that it is theft that is causing their profits to be down? By their own analyses they lose more money to insider theft and error than they do to retail theft. But they want to rewrite the legislation for punishing retail theft and blame cities and liberal politicians for closing stores. It’s a ridiculous argument. And I say this as a person who loves shopping at Target. Problem is that I also used to love Starbucks (like on a daily basis) but they carried this garbage too far and now I maybe get Starbucks like twice a year when I’m stuck at the airport and have no other options and really need some caffeine. And I’m not the only person who makes decisions this way.
They actually have evidence, Brandon. based on comments past, your “eyes and ears” are easily swayed towards one bias or another. maybe take a look at the data and come up with your own conclusions this time?
I guess I’ll ignore the fact looters made it into one of those PA stores just last night just coincidentally the day they announced its closure. And all the times I watched Ballard shelves get emptied by people just walking in and walking out. Apparently not the cause.
Target must be locking up their products just for kicks and giggles. What a waste of money to invest in all that plexiglass to prevent something that isn’t the cause of their woes.
Sales down because people don’t want to wait to have locked cases opened and go elsewhere for those products? No way that’s a downstream affect of theft. List of things I must have to ignore goes on and on.
As one of the managers at Target Westwood, I can assure you the reason for the closures in Ballard and University are due to theft and not slow business. The shrinkage on the balance sheets is shocking. I am in disbelief when I hear comments that seem to be in denial about how bad theft has become. Been to a retail store in Seattle lately? You can quickly see with your own eyes how horrific problem is. The thieves don’t even bother hiding it. They take what they please without hesitation.
A trend in theft that I’ve noticed this year is it seems it has become more acceptable to just take. In the university area where I go to school, I’ve noticed more regular students just filling up a cart and bypassing the checkout. I had never seen this until this year and I’ve seen it happen on multiple occasions. I don’t knonw if the mentality is if someone else can have it for free, I should be able to as well.It feels like paying for things is becoming optional.
The WS Target is a truly horrible shopping experience. And this is why we shop at Costco now. There are no degenerate teens brazenly shoplifting anything and everything. No mentally ill homeless people screaming obscenities at small children. One word folks: membership.
I was at the 4th Avenue Costco in March when the guy who murdered the woman he met there and took to the Mariners game a week before stole a handful of diamond rings. Really bad things happen at Costco, too.
Seen a lot of police patrols in the area over the past 2 weeks, after re-allowing cops can throw the chase, enforce law and order. Also, city probably knew in advance Targets intentions and beefed up security around businesses (I live 1/2 mile from Target). Before I saw a cops twice a month, now, everyday. Before I heard sirens twice an afternoon. Now, I hear sirens every hour. Cops are kicking ### and taking names – criminals beware.
Sorry, comment time is over.
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