Retirees, Canadians lure Target to resort town - Coeur d'Alene, Idaho - includes related article - The 'Great-Landing' of Target

Discount Store News, Dec 9, 1991 by Richard Halverson

Throngs of retirees fleeing California smog and crime and multitudes of Canadian shoppers escaping from high prices and high taxes at home prompted Target to open its second Idaho store in Coeur d'Alene, a town in the Northern Idaho Panhandle founded in 1878 as an Indian frontier fort.

Declining silver prices have tarnished its past glory as the nation's largest silver mining region, and the timber industry, another mainstay, is also on the skids. But Coeur d'Alene is gaining new fame as a mecca for retirees, tourists and shoppers.

The Chamber of Commerce gets some 900 requests for relocation information a month, mainly from Californians and Texans interested in moving here. So many newcomers are moving in that rental housing has become scarce and home builders can't build houses fast enough to meet demand.

The real estate boom has pushed housing prices up by about 15% last year, but the median price of a home in Kootenai County, of which Coeur d'Alene is the county seat, still is only $64,800--incredibly cheap by California standards.

That cheap real estate, along with low taxes, utilities and labor rates, helped make Coeur d'Alene a natural location for Target as it backfills from the Pacific Northwest toward Minneapolis.

For Target, Coeur d'Alene was but a small step, 33 miles, away from the Spokane, Wash., store it opened in 1990.

Target built its new store next to the Silver Lake Mall, anchored dby a Sears, JCPenney and a Fred Meyer Apparel store. A new Ernst home center alongside also helps generate traffic for Target.

To staff its new 88,000-sq.-ft. store with 180 "team members," Target could draw on a labor force of 21,546 living in 24,800 households. Wholesale and retail trade accounts for the largest chunk of private employment, 15.3%, and pays a $5.38 average wage.

Before the mall opened two years ago, the 82,000 residents of this market had to drive to Spokane if they couldn't find what they wanted at Shopko, Kmart or Montgomery Ward. Now, they have to choose from among the brand new Target, an extended Shopko. a recently remodeled and expanded Kmart, or an older Ward unit.

Residents also have another shopping alternative in a new factory outlet mall called Simply Factory Outlets, in Post Falls, Idaho, just seven miles west on I-90, toward Spokane.

On grand opening day at Coeur d'Alene, Oct. 13, when Target opened 22 new stores around the country, the manager of one of those factory outlet stores for women's apparel found that Target was undercutting her prices by about a third on comparable sweaters and pants.

"I plan to cut my prices," she said. "I'll be competitive."

"I've been waiting for Target for four years," the apparel shop manager said. "It'll give ShopKo some competition. It's been running the market for years."

  Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
1990 Population
City:                        24,540
Market Region:               82,000
Market Competition
Chain (No. of stores)
Kmart                           (1)
Montgomery Ward                 (1)
ShopKo                          (1)
Target                          (1)
Source: DSN research

Another visitor was James Walsh, who retired here from Los Angeles after a career in apparel sales.

"This is a retirement paradise," Walsh said. Target will do well in Coeur d'Alene, Walsh predicted, because "it has an excellent line of clothes. People love clothes up here."

Walsh had one suggestion to speed checkout: reserve a register just for cash purchases. "People up here will write a check for $2 or $3," he said, resulting in slow checkout for those who pay cash.

With so many people moving in--and so many jobs lost in mining and timber--many companies pay minimum wage, Walsh said.

Lynn Affeldt was shopping for toys for her sons Jessie, 4, and Michael, 1. Her husband, Tom, is a Navy recruiter, just transferred from San Diego, Calif.

"I like the neon color coding," Affeldt said. "It helps you find things. I'm glad to see Target here. ShopKo is a foreign store to me.

"Both ShopKo and Kmart have trouble with advertised goods. I don't like dealing with rain checks."

Coeur d'Alene also draws retirees from just across the Washington state line, such as Lee Bartos, who soon will retire from her position as a Spokane public school administrator, and her husband, Ray, a retired painting contractor.

"Taxes are cheaper here," Bartos said. In Washington, the annual license plate fee is $486 for their Lincoln Town Car, compared to $30 in Idaho.

Bartos was shopping for stirrup pants. "I don't like the clothes at ShopKo and Kmart," she said. "They don't fit, because they don't have talls."

Although the Canadian border sits 99 miles away, the Coeur d'Alene store is deriving 10% of its weekend sales from Canadian shoppers, said store manager Bob Hingtgen.

To make it easier for them, Target accepts Canadian money. A special key on the register automatically converts the amount tendered into U.S. currency, based on that day's bank exchange rate.

Towering prices back home and a combined federal and provincial sales tax rate of 14% in Alberta and British Columbia drive Canadians to shop south of the border. In comparison, Ihaho's sales tax is 5%.