Target opens first U.S. receive center in Houston, adds 185 jobs

Target’s new Houston jobs are not on a sales floor. They are in a 1.2 million-square-foot receive center built to take imported goods off trucks, sort them closer to the port and push them faster into the supply chain that keeps Target stores stocked.

The company opened the first U.S. receive center at 5805 South Sam Houston Parkway East, a $265 million facility that will create 185 jobs to start. Target marked the opening with a ribbon-cutting and sent off the first fully loaded truck bound for a regional distribution center, a symbolic first load for a building meant to speed the flow of inventory nationwide.

For Target team members, the practical question is whether this takes pressure off the parts of the network they feel every day. Target says the Houston site will warehouse imported items with long lead times, including holiday goods, using a new warehouse management system. The goal is to smooth inbound flow before products reach the 25 regional distribution centers that supply about 2,000 stores, which can help reduce the downstream congestion that shows up as late trucks, tighter backroom space and empty shelves.

Sousan Ortega, Target’s senior vice president for field operations, has said the receive center sits one step upstream from those regional distribution centers and closer to the port. Target says the Houston location is a strategic fit because of its central location and port access. The company already has two similar import warehouses, one in Washington state and one in Georgia, but says Houston is the first receive center of its kind in the United States.

The opening also fits into a larger spending plan. Target’s 2026 growth strategy includes an incremental $2 billion in investment, with more than $1 billion in additional capital expenditures and more than $1 billion in operating investments. Target says it now operates 66 supply chain facilities across 25 states, a network that underpins roughly 2,000 U.S. stores.

Houston has already become a bigger piece of that network. In April 2023, Target announced a 1.4 million-square-foot distribution center in Generation Park in northeast Houston. State records also show a 2024 racking project at the South Sam Houston Parkway site, listed at $750,000 and 347,480 square feet of pallet racking. Together, the projects point to a deeper Target footprint in Houston and a supply chain designed to move inventory with fewer choke points between the port, the warehouse and the store.