Long-awaited Outer Banks Target store finally has opening date
The building that housed North Carolina’s last Kmart store officially opens as Target on April 2.
Target purchased the run-down, 80,000-square-foot building at 1901 N. Croatan Highway in Kill Devil Hills in February 2021, with a targeted opening last year. But “external delays” slowed construction, Target officials said at the time.
Media representatives for Target confirmed the grand opening date, saying more information will be forthcoming soon.
The store will have a CVS pharmacy and a Starbucks, according to signs on the outside, but Target officials have released little information about features and services.
The Kmart closed in April 2020 after a 30-year run as one of two big box retailers on the Outer Banks, sharing the market with Walmart in Kitty Hawk. Kmart was popular with tourists for its beach shop and survived 15 years worth of Sears and Kmart store closures across the country before the ax fell.
Target originally planned to tear down the aging building, but later said it would remodel the existing store, which sits on a 14-acre plot of land owned by the Wright Company Inc. of Virginia Beach. Norfolk real estate mogul Joan Dalis, who died in 2019, was president of the Wright Co. Inc., owner of the Kmart property fronting U.S. 158, the main thoroughfare on the Outer Banks. Her brother is now the property owner.
Dalis may be best known for her investments in Ward’s Corner, a Norfolk shopping center built in 1947 at the northeast corner of the shopping district.
The Kill Devil Hills store will be smaller than typical Target stores, which average about 130,000 square feet. Since 2016, the Minnesota-based retailer has opened several small-format stores, some as little as 12,000 square feet. The smaller stores are often built in urban areas and near college campuses, where a traditional Target doesn’t fit and offer “assortments curated specifically for these communities,” the corporation said on its website.
Kari Pugh, kari.pugh@virginiamedia.com
