HomeGoods opens 21,000-square-foot location in Melville

A new HomeGoods store — the national home decor chain’s 13th on Long Island — has opened in Melville.

The 21,180-square-foot location, at 881A Walt Whitman Rd., behind Bertucci’s restaurant on Route 110, carries “a mix of eclectic home fashions from around the world including furniture, rugs, lighting, decorative accessories, tabletop, cookware, items for children, pets, and more,” HomeGoods spokesperson Lisa Zahn said in an email.

The new store, which opened Sunday,  is across the street from a Marshalls. Both stores are owned by Massachusetts-based The TJX Companies Inc., T.J. Maxx’s parent company.

TJX also owns other discount stores, including another home furnishings retailer, HomeSense.

“Opening a HomeGoods near a Marshalls gives our customers the ability to shop both brands easily,” said Zahn.

But Neil Saunders, managing director of retail at GlobalData, a Manhattan-based market research firm, said the brands owned by the company sometimes “target different shoppers.”

For instance, Saunders said earlier this year, “while HomeGoods is more focused on decor that would be impulse purchases, such as pillows, throws and pictures, HomeSense is much more about furniture, some of the bigger-ticket items in the room that you would want to upgrade or change.”

The Melville store, opened as part of a major expansion by TJX, will have about 65 full- and part-time jobs.

In 2017 the company opened three stores on Long Island — two HomeGoods stores, in Valley Stream and at Sunrise Mall in Massapequa, and a T.J. Maxx in Elmont.

This year the company plans to open six additional stores on the Island, including a T.J. Maxx in a former Staples building on Route 112 in Medford and a HomeSense in The Shops at Riverhead in late summer, Jeremy Isaacs, a partner in the Jericho office of Ripco Real Estate, said in February.

Zahn said a HomeSense store will open in Commack on May 24. She declined to comment on the additional openings.