Not unlike many other corporations with retail locations in cities nationwide, Target is calling it quits on Philadelphia. They follow in the footsteps of Wawa, who we noted last year had enough of Philadelphia’s crime and also picked up and left shop at several locations in Center City.

Target, located just blocks from one Wawa that recently closed, is taking the same action, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal. Its store at 12th and Chestnut streets in Center City will be closing after 7 years of operation. 

The 19,000 sq. foot store is going to be closing “due to several years of declining performance”, the report says. The company plans on attempting to relocate its 45 part and full time employees at the store. 

Kayla Castañeda, a spokesperson for Target, commented: “The decision to close one of our stores isn’t something we take lightly. It’s an action we take only after multiple years of working to improve performance.”

Target is also going to be closing three other stores, one in its hometown of Minneapolis and two in the Washington, D.C., area, the report continued. The company is also looking to open a massive 22,000 sq. foot store near 37th and Chestnut – basically in the middle of U Penn’s campus – which will help it replace its presence lost in Center City. 

The Center City store had just opened in July 2016 as part of an apartment building, and its across the street from a brand new $762 million Jefferson Health facility that is nearing the end of construction. On the south side of the closing Target store, additional commercial and residential buildings are being erected.

But the influx of new buildings onto the block wasn’t enough for the company to want to keep its store open. In addition to Wawa stores that have closed, a Marshalls located at 10th and Market street – just blocks away from Target – also closed earlier this year.

The incredible crime fighting skills of Lori Lightfoot have already driven Ken Griffin out of Chicago, as we noted last year. Now, it looks like CME Group Inc.’s Terry Duffy could be next. 

Duffy had already been outspoken to Chicago’s mayor about fighting crime – and, according to Bloomberg, that was before his wife was carjacked.

Duffy told the ICE House Podcast this week: “Three o’clock in the afternoon, my wife got carjacked right in the city of Chicago and it’s absolutely insane what’s going on here. Ninety percent of the carjackings in Chicago are done by juveniles. So the juveniles go in and they come right back out literally an hour later.”

The CME head grew up on the Southwest side of Chicago, the report notes, and currently works from a skyscraper downtown. But he says that crime in the city is inciting fear amongst his employees, who no longer want to return to the workplace. 

He said after challenging Lori Lightfoot on crime, she responded by saying the homicide rate was falling. “I said, ‘don’t go there. Please don’t go there.’ One is too many,” Duffy responded.

Lightfoot did not make it to a runoff after placing third in the city’s recent election for mayor. That’s likely due to the fact that crime was up 41% last year and has been up 33% since 2019, Bloomberg reports. 

“It was a tough time growing up in Chicago,” Duffy said, lamenting some optimism that the city could eventually get better and that the problem is wider spread than just Chicago. “So yes, we we’ve been on our back foot a few times… But I think we try to move forward and hopefully we can do it again.”

Others aren’t as optimistic. Recall, last year we noted that Citadel’s Griffin said  “Chicago is like Afghanistan, on a good day, and that’s a problem.” He also said that he saw “25 bullet shots in the glass window of the retail space” in the building he lives in.

“It just tells you, like, how deep crime runs in this city. There is nowhere, where you can feel safe today walking home at 9:30 at night and you worry about your kids coming to and from school.”

“Chicago will continue to be important to the future of Citadel, as many of our colleagues have deep ties to Illinois,” Griffin wrote, before explaining that the ties will not be that deep. “Over the past year, however, many of our Chicago teams have asked to relocate to Miami, New York and our other offices around the world,” he concluded. 

Retailers in Oregon are sounding the alarm bell over huge spikes in organized shoplifting after Walmart was forced to close its final two stores in Portland.

Oregon legislators are introducing a package of bills in an attempt to fight back against the lawlessness, which according to Michael Zacher, a detective with the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office, is “largely driven by substance abuse.”

However, the bills aren’t related to changing the state’s increasingly permissive view of drug enforcement, but focus more on increasing penalties for criminals engaged in organized theft.

Senate Bill 318 would set aside $5 million dollars to help authorities crack down on theft in cities and counties, while changes to Senate Bill 340 would stiffen penalties for organized retail theft, which under Oregon law involves working with another person to steal $5,000 or more worth of merchandise within a 90 day period.

Other changes would also empower authorities to charge thieves with a felony rather than a misdemeanor if they recklessly endanger other people in the course of a crime.

“In Oregon, Safeway/Albertson’s complains of losing more than $15 million in Multnomah County stores over the last eight years,” reports Oregon Public Broadcasting. “Police agencies talk of coordinated efforts to steal large amounts of merchandise, then sell it on the web or via flea markets. Store employees say they can feel unsafe as thieves carry out brazen thefts.”

Earlier this week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott blamed the Walmart closures on lawlessness in Portland and laid the blame squarely at the feet of Mayor Ted Wheeler.

Governor Abbott, are the dozens of Walmart stores that have closed in Texas in recent years all communities that "refuse to enforce the rule of law?" The retail industry is changing and retail theft is a national issue. https://t.co/pFVf0HwD4W

— Mayor Ted Wheeler (@tedwheeler) March 7, 2023

600 employees face being let go or transferred as a result oft he closures, which Walmart refused to blame on theft despite CEO Doug McMillon previously lamenting a rise in “shrink,” an industry term for in-store theft.

Nike was also forced to close the doors to its neighborhood store in Northeast Portland and has asked the city to provide off-duty police officers to guard the premises, a request unlikely to be met due to an existing shortage of officers, partly a consequence of the BLM-inspired ‘defund the police’ movement.

OBI lobbyist Derek Sangston told lawmakers that the organized thefts were not homeless people trying to get by or kids stealing candy bars but rather the work of “organized retail crime syndicates.”

As we previously reported, Amazon recently announced it will be closing several grocery stores in high crime cities like NYC, Seattle and San Francisco, but claims the measure is related to “cost-cutting”.

As we highlight in the video below, all across America, the streets of Democrat-run cities are being taken over by the mad, the mentally ill and criminal mobs.

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