Barnes & Noble relocating East Northport bookstore; discount grocer Aldi to take spot

Barnes & Noble is moving on. Aldi is moving in.

Barnes & Noble will close its East Northport store in January for a relocation, and the discount grocer plans to take the bookstore’s current spot.

The Barnes & Noble in East Northport has been at 4000 Jericho Tpke., in the Huntington Square shopping center, since September 2008, said Janine Flanigan, senior director of store planning and design for Barnes & Noble Inc.

The store occupies 27,911 square feet in Huntington Square.

“We are closing because our lease ended, and the landlord is redeveloping,” Flanigan said.

Huntington Square, a 269,948-square-foot shopping center, is owned by a Rockville, Maryland-based company, Federal Realty Investment Trust, which declined to comment.

Barnes & Noble is exploring nearby locations for its relocating Huntington Square store, and hopes to be able to announce the selected address in 30 days and move into the space by spring, Flanigan said.

The approximately 30 people who work in the Huntington Square store will be moved to other stores temporarily during the closing, she said. The nearest of the eight stores on Long Island is a 9.7-mile drive away, in Bay Shore.

The relocation of the Huntington Square store will allow Barnes & Noble “to build our new model in our new format, which is really exciting to us,” said Flanigan, who said the new design has brighter colors and different fixtures and furniture.

Barnes & Noble, whose average store size is 25,000 square feet, is opening some stores in smaller spaces because it allows more flexibility in areas where available real estate may be limited, the retailer said. 

For example, the retailer will open a store in Bridgehampton in October that occupies 9,000 square feet, and its store that opened in Riverhead in November is 10,811 square feet.

The relocated Huntington Square store might not be smaller, but it will be in a more high-traffic area, Flanigan said.

Founded in 1873, Barnes & Noble is the only nationwide chain of brick-and-mortar bookstores left in the United States. The Manhattan-based parent company has 595 Barnes & Noble stores and one B. Dalton Bookseller store in the nation.

Under new ownership and leadership since 2019, Barnes & Noble has been growing after years of sales declines and closing stores as fewer people bought books, and e-commerce giant Amazon, the largest retail seller of books worldwide, chipped away at bookstores’ sales.

Some of Barnes & Noble's changes included giving book-selection control to stores instead of the corporate office in Manhattan.

Barnes & Noble opened 16 new stores in 2022 and it plans to open about 30 this year, compared to just 15 new stores opened from 2010 to 2019.

Making plans for Aldi

The Huntington Planning Board will consider a request to amend Huntington Square’s site plan Aug. 2, said Michael McCarthy, the attorney representing Federal Realty. 

The landlord is requesting permission to increase the size of the shopping center from 269,948 square feet to 270,513 square feet to accommodate the Aldi grocery store, he said.

Aside from its store planned for East Northport, the fast-growing grocery chain plans to open two other Aldi stores on Long Island next year — in Medford and Central Islip, said Chris Daniels, a regional vice president for the retailer.

The German discount grocer’s 13th Long Island store will open July 27 in Rocky Point.

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.