Target taking over Bridgehampton space vacated by last full-size Kmart in contiguous U.S.

A Bridgehampton space recently vacated by the last full-size Kmart in the contiguous United States has a taker.

Target has leased the 89,935-square-foot space in Bridgehampton Commons, according to Jennifer Maisch, spokeswoman for Kimco Realty Corp., the Jericho-based real estate investment trust that owns the shopping center.

Maisch declined to provide details, including when Target leased the space.

On Monday, Target confirmed it will open a store in Bridgehampton but declined to provide more details, including the expected timeframe for opening the store and the number of people it will employ.

"We’re excited to bring an easy, affordable and convenient shopping experience to new guests in the Bridgehampton community with this new Target store. ... As we get closer to opening the store, we’ll have more specific details to share," said Minneapolis-based Target Corp., which  has 20 stores on Long Island.

Kmart’s Bridgehampton store at 2044 Montauk Hwy. closed Oct. 20 after 25 years there, ending an era for a long-struggling discount retailer that was once dominant across the nation.

While thousands of Kmarts closed for decades, the Bridgehampton store was able to hang on in the Hamptons for so long because it lacked competition and it fulfilled a need, according to locals.

The closest Walmart to Kmart’s former Bridgehampton location is 24.8 miles away in Riverhead, outside the Hamptons. The closest Target is 23.3 miles away, also in Riverhead.

There aren’t more big-box stores in Southampton because the town discourages their development to maintain the local aesthetic and feel of the communities, said Southampton Councilman Tommy John Schiavoni, the council’s liaison for Bridgehampton.

Around 2003, Southampton enacted a restriction in most zoning districts that limits the size of buildings to no more than 15,000 square feet, but Bridgehampton Commons was exempt because it was built before the code change, according to Clare P. Shea, assistant town planning director.

Target would be in a space that has a pre-existing, conforming use, and it would be good for the area and provide jobs, Schiavoni said Monday.

“Target does a good job at what they do but I would still prefer that people shop at their local main streets,” he said.

No building-related plans for Target have been submitted to the Town of Southampton for approval, Janice Scherer, town planning and development administrator, said Monday.

Lost footing

Bridgehampton Commons is a 287,493-square-foot shopping center whose tenants include a King Kullen supermarket, Gap, TJ Maxx, Staples and Ulta Beauty.

In March 2022, when there were four Kmarts left in the contiguous United States, Kimco spokesman Christopher Ostrowski told Newsday that the store in Bridgehampton was performing well.

"Kmart is one of our strongest-performing tenants at Bridgehampton Commons in terms of customer visits over the last 12 months," he said in 2022, adding that the retailer was paying its rent and was a good tenant.

Kmart's parent company, Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based Transform Holdco LLC, which does business as Transformco, has not responded to Newsday's requests for comment, including inquiries about why it closed the Bridgehampton Kmart or how many employees were affected.

The closing of the Bridgehampton store last month left Kmart with one small store in the contiguous United States, in Miami.

Last year, most of the space in the Miami store was leased to home goods retailer At Home, which opened in October 2023, said Kelly Linthicum, spokeswoman for Dallas-based At Home.

Transformco also has a few Kmart locations in the U.S. territories of Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Kmart used to be the nation’s largest discount retailer, with 2,300 stores in the early 1990s. But it lost its hold on discount retail as competitors, such as Target and Walmart, grew and innovated.

Kmart Holdings Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2002.

In 2005, Kmart bought Sears, another iconic, struggling retailer, in an $11 billion deal, forming Sears Holdings Corp., which had about 3,500 stores nationwide.

Mired in debt and losing shoppers to discount and online retailers, Sears Holdings closed thousands of stores. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2018, and its assets were purchased for $5.2 billion in 2019 by Transformco, an affiliate of former Sears chief executive Eddie Lampert’s ESL Investments Inc. But the store closings continued.

The are about a dozen Sears stores left in the United States.

The last Sears on Long Island closed in 2021 at Sunrise Mall in Massapequa. After a Kmart in Sayville closed in 2020, only the Bridgehampton store remained on the Island.

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.