and By MICHAEL BOYLAN

[email protected]

It's official: Target is aiming

for Peachtree City.

The "upscale" discount

retailer will occupy 125,000 square feet in a 264,000-square foot Phase

II expansion of the Kedron Village shopping center that will rival The

Avenue in both size and appearance.

Four other "midsize"

big-box retailers, occupying spaces of 30,000 to 60,000 square feet each,

will join Target. Potential tenants were not identified.

The entire project, once leased,

is expected to bring as many as 450 jobs to the city.

To handle the crowds, the developer

is asking to add more than 1,100 parking spaces, the prime concern of

residents who envision Saturday morning traffic clogging the Georgian

Parkway corridor.

For comparison, the Home Depot

in Peachtree City is just slightly larger at 137,000 square feet than

the proposed Target, while the Wal-Mart building is the city's largest

retail structure at 203,000 square feet.

The Peachtree City Planning

Commission had its first look at the proposed expansion on Monday, and

a large crowd of neighborhood residents, some who protested plans in recent

weeks to put a carwash on nearby Georgian Parkway, voiced concerns about

the plan.

Mike Cohn, representing the

developer, Faison Enterprises, told the crowd that the project "tries

to integrate elements already found in Peachtree City." He made comparison

to The Avenue, a project that he had worked on previously.

Dennis Payton, chairman of

the planning commission, was concerned about all of the impervious surface

that was proposed.

Despite its size, the Peachtree

City store will not be a "SuperTarget" and thus it will not

compete with neighboring Kroger to sell groceries, said Peachtree City

Mayor Steve Brown, who met with the project developers and homeowners

from the Georgian Hills area to discuss the project before the planning

commission meeting.

Phase II of the shopping center

will be built in the open field to the right of and slightly downhill

from the existing commercial center, curving