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ST. PAUL-Although it has yet to confirm plans to develop a SuperTarget on the site, Target Corp. has an $8.6-million purchase agreement to buy the Four Points by Sheraton hotel to expand its Target store in the city's Midway area.
The land is on a high-profile property between University Avenue and Interstate 94 on the eastern edge of Hamline Avenue. Target made the highest of several bids for the property, according to Port Authority officials. The St. Paul Port Authority's board of commissioners will consider the sale at a public hearing this afternoon.
There is some opposition to the deal, since the hotel's employees would lose their jobs once it is closed and the building torn down. The Port Authority, which helped finance the hotel more than two decades ago, took ownership of the hotel recently when its owners defaulted on the bonds that built it.
If the board approves the deal, Target would then have three months to conduct its due diligence and to submit the proposed sale for approval to the retailer's management committee for final approval. If it is approved, the deal could close in October.
The site is just blocks away from St. Paul's first Wal-Mart store, which opened a little more than a year ago. SuperTargets tend to be about 177,000 sf and employ some 400 workers.
The net sale proceeds of the Target deal would be returned to the property owner, the 876 Common Revenue Bond Fund. The fund's bondholders repossessed the hotel in February 2004, when Grosvenor Properties Ltd., a San Francisco-based real estate company, defaulted on the property's debt-service payments. Grosvenor bought the hotel in 1988 after the Port Authority repossessed the hotel.
St. Paul hotels in general have had a hard time since the economic downturn four years ago, the result of a slump in business travel following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
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