Barnes & Noble relocating East Northport bookstore to Route 110 in South Huntington

Barnes & Noble is headed back to Huntington’s main retail corridor after packing it up more than a decade ago.

The retailer, which announced in July that its 15-year-old East Northport bookstore will be relocating in 2024, said this week that it had found a new home for the store about a 6-mile drive away — in South Huntington.

The bookstore will relocate to leased space at 301 Walt Whitman Road, which is a section of the busy Route 110 corridor, in a shopping center that contains a Men’s Wearhouse store, said Janine Flanigan, senior director of store planning and design for Barnes & Noble Inc. 

“The store will be in our new design and will have all of the things you would expect to see in a Barnes & Noble,” she said. The new design has brighter colors and different fixtures and furniture, she said.

The South Huntington store, which will be approximately 14,000 square feet and have a café, is expected to open in late summer or early fall 2024, Flanigan said.

The Barnes & Noble in East Northport has been at 4000 Jericho Tpke. in the Huntington Square shopping center since September 2008.

The retailer is relocating the 27,911-square-foot store because its lease will expire in January, and the landlord, Federal Realty Investment Trust in Rockville, Maryland, plans to redevelop the shopping center, Flanigan said.

However, Federal Realty said Wednesday that it had no major redevelopment plans for the property.

"Though we are not currently planning a center-wide redevelopment at Huntington Square, tenant departures spark new opportunities to evaluate individual spaces and weigh out options for property upgrades," Federal Realty said.

But the South Huntington shopping center is a better location for Barnes & Noble because it is in a higher-traffic area than the East Northport store, Flanigan said.

The shopping center where Barnes & Noble is relocating is across the street from the Huntington Shopping Center, which is undergoing a $75 million redevelopment that will bring a Whole Foods Market, The Container Store and other new tenants by the end of 2024.

Barnes & Noble had a store in the Huntington Shopping Center for 16 years. The retailer told Newsday in October 2011 that it was closing the 24,930-square-foot store in early 2012 because it could not reach a lease agreement with the landlord, also Federal Realty.

The approximately 30 employees who work in Barnes & Noble’s East Northport store will be moved to other stores temporarily during the closing, Flanigan said. The nearest of the retailer’s eight bookstores on Long Island is a 9.7 mile-drive away, in Bay Shore.

As for the East Northport space that Barnes & Noble is vacating, discount grocer Aldi will open a store there in 2024.

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 598 Barnes & Noble stores and one B. Dalton Bookseller store in the United States.

Barnes & Noble plans to open its ninth Long Island store, in Bridgehampton, in November.

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.