Burlington, Target among incoming tenants expected to revitalize New Hyde Park shopping center

Burlington, Foot Locker, The Paper Store and Target are among the incoming tenants that will take large chunks of space in a New Hyde Park shopping center that has been plagued by a high vacancy rate.

Also joining the Lake Success Shopping Center will be accessories store Claire’s and a Northwell Health urgent care center. 

The new Target store, plans for which were announced in 2019, is under construction as an anchor that will be in Sears’ former space at 1400 Union Tpke. in the shopping center, which is on Nassau County's North Shore, one block east of the Queens line.

Having Target and other well-known retailers coming in will go a long way toward increasing foot traffic and attracting more tenants to the shopping center, which has lost several large stores, such as Modell’s Sporting Goods, Sears, Pier 1 Imports and Bed Bath & Beyond, over the past several years due to their parent companies’ bankruptcies or other financial problems, said Robert Peck, managing agent and partner in Lake Success Shopping Center LLC.

“It can’t hurt at all having a big brother like [Target as] your anchor. … Target carries itself, I think, across all the demographics. It’s a price-point store, but it fulfills the desires of Great Neck, as well as eastern Queens,” he said.

The shopping center was built in 1956, Peck said.

The shopping center is 523,583 square feet , according to CoStar Group, a Washington, D.C.-based provider of real estate information.  

Here is the rundown of the tenants going to the Lake Success Shopping Center:

• Burlington: Shortly before Bed Bath & Beyond filed for bankruptcy protection in April, off-price retailer Burlington signed a lease to take the home goods chain's 31,000-square-foot below-ground unit in the Lake Success Shopping Center, Peck said. Burlington will open this fall, said Lindsi Smith, a spokeswoman for Burlington, New Jersey-based Burlington Stores Inc. The store will be below several tenants, including Mattress Firm, Massage Envy and the incoming Foot Locker, but customers will be able to access it by using an elevator and escalators in a ground-floor lobby, Peck said. 
• Claire's: The store will open in a 1,000-square-foot unit this fall, according to a spokeswoman for the Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based retailer of jewelry and other accessories. The store will open in a space that a Verizon store previously occupied, Peck said.
• Foot Locker: A 15,000-square-foot Foot Locker will open in a combined space created by the exits of a Marshalls shoe store and Mattress Firm, the latter of which relocated next door to a unit vacated in 2020 by girls’ clothing store Justice. Foot Locker would like to open its athletic shoe and clothing store before the winter holidays, Peck said. Manhattan-based Foot Locker Inc. did not respond to a request for comment.
• Northwell Health-GoHealth Pediatric & Adult Urgent Care: The center is expected to open this year and employ six to eight people, GoHealth spokeswoman Adina Genn said. It will open in an approximately 4,400-square-foot unit formerly occupied by women’s clothing store New York & Co., Peck said.
• The Paper Store: The stationery and gift store will occupy about 15,000 square feet on the upper level of a two-story former Modell’s unit, Peck said. The store is scheduled to open Sept. 21, and up to 50 employees will work there, according to the Acton, Massachusetts-based retailer.
  The Paper Store is a family-owned chain of about 100 stores, including five on Long Island, some of which are under the Hallmark brand. The retailer is experimenting with opening larger stores, so the New Hyde Park location will be more than twice the size of a typical store and one of the largest in the chain, which has four other larger-than-normal stores, the company said. The New Hyde Park store will be a signature location offering special products and services, such as ear piercing, a mix-and-match bulk candy shop,  kids nook and water-bottle refilling station, The Paper Store said.
• Target: The discount retailer will occupy a three-level, approximately 115,000-square-foot end unit that Sears vacated in 2018. The store will include a Starbucks and CVS pharmacy, according to building plans Target submitted to the Town of North Hempstead. Target’s opening was delayed in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the store will open in 2024, Peck said. Minneapolis-based Target Corp. declined to disclose details about the store.

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.