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Community reacts to the news Target isn't opening in New Orleans East as soon as thought

Mayor Cantrell said the big department store was coming to the East but Target said no new stores are planned.

NEW ORLEANS — 16 years ago, before Hurricane Katrina, the business district in the East used to be a metropolis, with a plaza and big retailers, all for the residents of the East. More recently there’s been a push to revitalize the area, so the question is - what’s coming back?

Rumors of a Target coming to New Orleans East have been swirling online, it comes after Mayor Cantrell said the retailer had bought the old Lowes in the East. 

Mayor LaToya Cantrell announced Target is coming to the East during a community meeting Monday night, according to our partners at NOLA.com.

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But the Mayor may have gotten ahead of herself.

“This acquisition is in its early stages and has just gone under contract,” the Mayor's office said.

“At Target, we continuously explore possible locations for new stores, including in the New Orleans area, but we don’t have any new-store news to share at this time,” Target Spokesperson Jacqueline DeBuse said.

Charles Simmons Jr. has lived in the East since 1976. The change he’s seen has only been for the worse.

"We need a boom, make things happen, and if businesses come back maybe that would help..” Simmons Jr. said. "Booming it was in 76-77, to just hardly anything now."

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Donald Bernard Jr., the owner of Floating Island Bakery and Café, said the focus instead needs to be on small businesses.

“Having a target here, I don’t really see the benefit,” Bernard Jr. said. “If they redevelop that whole area and made like a strip mall for local businesses, I think that would be better.”

With 27 subdivisions and 7000 areas of developmental land, Councilman Oliver Thomas said the area has all the assets to be better than what it once was.

“New Orleans East is ripe, it's prime, it's overdue,” Thomas said. “Investors and developers need to look at the assets that are there, and take advantage of it.”

He couldn’t tell us whether or not Target is coming but the general consensus is the East needs more businesses.

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