How much is a Target or a Walmart really worth to your community? When Strong Towns member Jake Krohn heard that his local Target in Fergus Falls, Minnesota was planning to leave town in a few months, he decided to find the answer to this question.

While many of his neighbors and local media were wringing their hands about what a loss this departure would be for Fergus Falls, Jake dug into the tax data behind the Target and presented his findings on his blog. He writes:

Located midway between downtown and the interstate, Target sits on 8.6 acres of land. It’s a modest-sized store by Target standards. The taxable value of this parcel is about $2.8 million; on a per acre basis (why this is important) that comes out to about $328k/acre.

Jake goes on to share the tax value per acre of some other local big box stores including Shopko ($372k/acre) and Walmart ($300k/acre). Through simple modeling, Jake illustrates the tax values of these different properties. The taller the plot, the higher the tax value.