Brian Cornell didn’t feel compelled to discuss the financial state of the company at the Target Corp. annual shareholders meeting Wednesday morning. Instead, the retailer’s chief executive officer used the opportunity to outline where the company stands today “during this pivotal time for our country.”
Cornell said most of those stores have reopened but seven were heavily damaged. Four of those are expected to reopen by the end of the month and the other three will remain shuttered until they are repaired. The company’s Lake Street store in Minneapolis was the hardest hit, but Cornell said Target “will rebuild that store and bring it back online as soon as possible, likely before year’s end.”
Cornell said more stores could have been impacted, but — thanks to grassroots cleanup efforts by community members in Minneapolis as well as those in other cities such as Philadelphia and New York City who “banded together to protect their Target from damage” — the damage was minimized.
Cornell said Target remains “determined to help all families,” despite the fact that “retail companies have been tested” to their core lately. He also understood the high expectations the public has for businesses and communities as a result of the “deep pain of racism and brutality unleashed most recently by the killings of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.”