Huntington shopping center to begin $31.2M in renovations ahead of ShopRite's arrival

A renovation estimated to cost $31.2 million will soon be underway at Huntington Commons, formerly called the Big H shopping center, as ShopRite prepares to take over most of Kmart’s former space on the property.

Other changes will include a relocation for off-price department store Marshalls, which has been in the shopping center since 1981. The store will take some of the former Kmart space between ShopRite and Home Depot.

Located on New York Avenue north of the Huntington LIRR station, Huntington Commons has a high vacancy rate, but the owner is hoping that the new grocery store and a refreshed look across the property, including new building facades, upgraded landscaping and a repaved parking lot, by early 2022 will help attract new tenants.

Substantial construction at the site will begin within 60 days, said Scott Auster, senior vice president and head of leasing for Urban Edge Properties, the Manhattan-based real estate investment trust that owns the shopping center.

"Going forward, what we’re positioning this for is to be the premier daily-needs shopping destination for the entire town of Huntington," he said.

ShopRite will take 63% of the 102,949-square-foot space that Kmart used to occupy, while Marshalls will relocate to a 27,357-square-foot space, similar to its current size, Auster said. About 1,500 square feet of the former Kmart space remains unleased, he said.

Both the grocery store and relocated Marshalls will open in the first quarter of 2022, he said.

The TJX Companies Inc., the Framingham, Massachusetts-based company that owns Marshalls, declined to comment on the store’s relocation.

The new ShopRite will employ about 300 people, said Karen O’Shea, spokeswoman for Wakefern Food Corp., a retailer-owned cooperative based in Keasbey, New Jersey, that owns the ShopRite registered trademark.

The new supermarket will offer fresh prepared foods and grab-and-go meals; fresh produce, deli and bakery departments; a butcher shop; and online shopping with the ShopRite from Home Service, O’Shea said.

Wakefern supplies groceries and support to nearly 280 independently owned ShopRite stores in six East Coast states.

The ShopRite in Huntington will be owned and operated by Seth Greenfield and his family, who have five of the 16 ShopRites on Long Island, O’Shea said.

Betting on groceries

Built in 1962, Huntington Commons is a 215,520-square-foot shopping center whose existing tenants include Old Navy, Petco, Burger King, Famous Footwear and Tommy Tacos. Home Depot owns its building in the shopping center instead of leasing from Urban Edge.

Huntington Commons’ vacancy rate in the first quarter of 2021 was 27.4%, according to Urban Edge.

That was nearly three times the average for Long Island shopping centers, which had an average vacancy rate of 9.5% during the first quarter, said Tom LaSalvia, senior economist at Moody’s Analytics CRE, a Manhattan-based real estate information provider.

The benefit of having a grocery store as an anchor is that shoppers generally make frequent trips there, and some will be inclined to shop at other businesses in the center if those tenants have a strong enough offering, Auster said.

Huntington Commons hasn’t had a grocery store since a Pathmark closed there in 1996.

Deemed essential businesses that were allowed to remain open during the COVID-19 pandemic that led to months of business shutdowns starting in March 2020, supermarkets showed that they were "pandemic proof," LaSalvia said.

Regardless of what happens with online sales, consumers still have a strong desire to see and touch perishable goods in person, he said.

"We still are pretty bullish on grocery-anchored community centers much more than if it was an apparel-anchored center. That’s why malls have been struggling a lot more," he said.

Kmart was an anchor store in Huntington Commons from 1998 to 2019, but the chain’s stores have been struggling for years.

"For at least the last few years, when Kmart was there, there clearly was a lack of investment in that store," Auster said of the Huntington store.

The Kmart in Huntington Commons was among 40 stores, including some Sears locations, that former parent company Sears Holdings Corp. closed in early 2019. Sears Holdings Corp., based in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October 2018.

(The only Kmart left on Long Island is in Bridgehampton.)

Huntington Commons also has lost several smaller tenants in the past several years, including Payless ShoeSource, The Children’s Place, Sally Beauty and Outback Steakhouse.

Some of the tenant exits were due to their parent companies’ decisions to close groups of stores.

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.