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Wesley Chapel SuperTarget woos and wows shoppers
By JAMES THORNER, Times Staff Writer WESLEY CHAPEL -- Phyllis Wiegand was visiting Wesley Chapel's new SuperTarget, but she might as well have been in Paris. "We call it Tar-zhay," Wiegand said Wednesday in her best French accent. "It's because they have fashionable clothes." Target Corp., which on Wednesday opened its first combination department store and supermarket in the Tampa Bay region, seems to attract those kind of enthusiasts. Like Wiegand, thousands of people were lured to the new store with the extra wide aisles at County Line Road and Bruce B. Downs Boulevard. At 184,000 square feet, it's the first so-called big box store on a still-undeveloped commercial corridor just north of New Tampa in Pasco County. Shoppers such as Rose Bocko, a retiree who lives in the Meadow Pointe neighborhood across the street from SuperTarget, praised the convenience. Whether she'll kick her Wal-Mart habit -- that company's superstore sits a mile south of SuperTarget -- remains to be seen. "Target has beautiful stuff. I'd like to pick one of everything," Bocko said as she loaded her purchases into her car. SuperTarget threw a party Tuesday night for its fans. From 6 to 9 p.m., customers gorged themselves on free food: pasta Alfredo, shrimp cocktail, grilled chicken and rice, submarine sandwiches, even sushi. For dessert people ate cake, muffins, cookies, ice cream and candy samples. To their disappointment, Kim Fish, her husband and three children missed the Tuesday night open house, but dutifully turned up Wednesday morning for opening day. "It's nicer and cleaner than other stores," Fish said from the 1,300-space parking lot mostly filled with cars. "We just moved here from Illinois and we had one up there." SuperTarget's official grand opening begins Saturday night with an 8:30 p.m. fireworks display. Other festivities follow on Sunday. Regular store hours are 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Sundays. At least one person interviewed Wednesday, Eddie Stoltz of Lutz, wasn't totally won over by the big new store. He argued grocery prices could have been better. "It's all right," Stoltz said as he dashed from the store carrying bags about 11 a.m. "It's not Wal-Mart." But the company has found a loyalist in Wiegand, who vowed to shift much of her grocery business from Publix in Land O'Lakes to the SuperTarget. As she heaped several cases of soft drinks into her trunk, Wiegand bubbled: "This is just great."
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From today's Pasco Times |
