The Target store proposed for the West Loop is a step backward in terms of neighborhood aesthetics, charm and style. But in the end, it’s an incremental net positive. Just barely. And mostly because the job market is simply dreadful.

Let’s look at aesthetics first.

We’re feeling a little big-boxed-out these days. More Wal-Marts are on their way, and Roosevelt Road in the South Loop is already lined with mega retailers fronted by seas of parking lots. Ashland and Roosevelt will soon be dominated by a Costco and a strip mall.

Like many West Loop residents, we’re dismayed that the original plans for the vacant former Fannie May site near Jackson and Aberdeen, where Target wants to build, are dead in the water.

That project, called the West Loop Promenade, envisioned a mixture of residential and retail development, including larger retailers, an independent movie theater and smaller shops. The hoped-for commercial mix in the Promenade struck us as a welcome blend. It fit squarely with the planning undertaken over a number of years to nurture smaller-scale enterprise in the West Loop. A Target, frankly, doesn’t. And we had wanted the big boxes to stay clustered on the Roosevelt Road corridor.

That said, unemployment remains brutal in Chicago — the unemployment rate in our region stood at 10.3 percent in May. Target’s promise of 200 to 250 new jobs is helpful, to say the least.

But as we said earlier: Just barely.

Target representatives said at a recent meeting in the West Loop that no more than 25 percent of the new jobs would be full-time at a store in the neighborhood. Tellingly, on a day when the city council zoning committee passed the Pullman Wal-Mart after years of debate about wages and benefits, a representative from Target declined to tell Chicago Journal starting wages for their service employees.

It’s a measure of how desperate the labor market is that the promise mostly part-time positions that probably will pay at or near the state minimum wage is seen as a major economic boon.

We’d wanted for more for the old Fannie May site — mostly independent entrepreneurs running interesting, compelling shops patronized by neighbors and those passing through the West Loop. That’s gone. The new reality is here.