Retail Roundup: New Airport Plaza tenants to include IHOP, Tropical Smoothie

Lineup changes at Airport Plaza will include IHOP serving up its signature Rooty Tooty Fresh ’N Fruity Pancakes in the Farmingdale shopping center before year’s end.

In addition to IHOP, other incoming tenants will include Tropical Smoothie Cafe and European Wax Center at the 448,302-square-foot shopping center at Conklin Street and Broadhollow Road, said Rob Wachtler, director of real estate at Kimco Realty Corp., the center’s New Hyde Park-based owner. .

Also, Gold & Meyer’s Gourmet Deli & Bagelry recently opened a store there.

An Orangetheory Fitness will be opening in Airport Plaza this year, which I’ve already reported. Airport Plaza is 97 percent leased now, Wachtler said.

Built in 2000, the shopping center has added more national retailers, including discounter Five Below and optical store Visionworks, as a direct result of grocer Stew Leonard’s opening a store there in 2016, Wachtler said. This was Stew Leonard’s first store on Long Island; it moved into a 60,000-square-foot space that had been vacated by restaurant-arcade Dave & Buster’s in 2015.

“It’s almost more attractive to national and your daily-needs [retailers] because obviously a supermarket gets more visitors on a weekly basis than someone like a Dave & Buster’s, where it’s more of a weekend foot traffic,” he said.

Airport Plaza’s existing tenants include T.J. Maxx, Staples, Home Depot, Bed Bath & Beyond and an Applebee’s restaurant.

Here’s the rundown on the shopping center’s new and coming tenants:

• The IHOP franchise will open in a 6,820-square-foot restaurant this fall in a space that China Grand Buffet vacated in 2017, Wachtler said. The California-based pancake chain’s more than 1,800 locations include 18 on Long Island, one of which is in Lindenhurst — 3.42 miles from Airport Plaza. The new eatery’s “opening will not impact other IHOPs in the area,” IHOP spokesman Austin Lewis said.
• A Tropical Smoothie Cafe franchisee, John Kuitwaard, who owns a location in Massapequa, is opening another one in Airport Plaza in the fall, said Chelsea Bear, spokeswoman for the Atlanta-based chain. The new 2,600-square-foot smoothie shop will move into the unit that Long Island’s last Cheeburger Cheeburger restaurant vacated in September, Wachtler said. There are 750 Tropical Smoothie Cafes nationwide, including 18 on Long Island, Bear said.
• A European Wax Center franchise, 1,584 square feet, and Orangetheory Fitness franchise, 3,121 square feet, will be splitting Airport Plaza space that Floris Day Spa left in 2012. Melville-based franchise operator RGL Group LLC will open the waxing center, a relocation of one at 1280 Broadhollow Rd. in Farmingdale, in June, while the fitness studio is to open in July, said Nick Galanis, head of operations for RGL. Of Hallandale, Florida-based European Wax Center’s 721 locations, 21 are on Long Island and the vast majority are franchises.
• Gold & Meyer’s Gourmet Deli & Bagelry, which was founded in Plainview in 1959, sells bagels baked fresh daily, as well as bagel burgers, soups and sandwiches. Brothers Mujahid and Shakeel Chaudhry bought the business five years ago and opened a second shop in Airport Plaza in April, Mujahid Chaudhry said. The 3,534-square-foot shop replaced a Bagel Factory that closed in January.

Retail Roundup is a column about major retail news on Long Island — store openings, closings, expansions, acquisitions, etc. — that is published online and in the Monday paper. To read more of these columns, click here. If you have news to share, please send an email to Newsday reporter Tory N. Parrish at tory.parrish@newsday.com.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.