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Lake Woodlands Target store reopens

Target team members Jeremy Jansen and Carlos Mercier work in the redsigned and relocated electronics department. Like the rest of the store, the department freatures many of the prototype designs that will be featured in Target stores that open in 2009 and later.

By JAKE MUONIO
Published: 11.21.08
The Target store on Lake Woodlands Drive has reopened with a new look.

The store, which suffered a total product loss as a result of a roof collapse during Hurricane Ike, reopened its doors Nov. 13.

“The whole area over the checkstands, the roof took on some water and the roof actaully collapsed,” said Ward Dahl, the Target’s store team lead.

Dahl said water pooled on the roof for a while before causing it to collapse with such force it pushed the store’s Food Avenue section into the south-west corner of the building.

“It was like the drain on a tub,’ he said.

When Target employees came to inspect the store after the storm they were greeted by about 12-inches of standing water, beginning in the entryway and stretching back through out the store.

Crews of workers went to work as soon as the water level went down, tearing out everything -- shelves, product and flooring.

“It’s not the way we’d want to do a remodel,” said Carl Koschany, who built the original store with Sun Contracting, and was now in charge of the remodeling as site representative for Targt Corporation.

It was under Koschany and Dahl’s guidance that the store was completely gutted, remodeled and restocked in two months.

The stocking of the store, which typically takes about six weeks for a new store, was completed in three weeks, as the store’s 260 employees pitched in, for a while around the clock, to load 30 semi-loads of product onto the shelves.

Everything in the remodeled store is new -- the brighter, more energy efficient lighting, shelving, floors and cash registers.

The final piece of the store’s operation, Food Avenue, is expected to be up and running around Thanksgiving.

“People were genuinely happy to see us open,” Dahl said.



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