$5M renovation underway at Plainview shopping center getting T.J. Maxx

A $5 million renovation is underway at a Plainview shopping center, to which off-price store T.J. Maxx will relocate this year.

The renovation work at Woodbury Plaza on South Oyster Bay Road will include a new facade, signs, walkways and other improvements, said Robert Delavale, vice president and director of leasing for Breslin Realty Development Corp., the Garden City company that co-owns the shopping center with Manhasset-based real estate firm Colin Development LLC.

The $5 million renovation project began five months ago, said Wilbur F. Breslin, chief executive and chairman of the board at Breslin Realty.

“The renovation would entail the entire shopping center, which would have been the second time since I bought the center in 1979 that we’ve redone the center.  … The facade [and other renovations] will be completed by Sept. 15,” he said.

The first renovation of the shopping center was done in the early 1980s, Delavale said.

T.J. Maxx will become the largest anchor in Woodbury Plaza when it moves into the 24,000-square-foot end unit at 401 S. Oyster Bay Road that home decor store Bed Bath & Beyond vacated in January.  The T.J. Maxx is currently across the street in a 30,000-square-foot space in Woodbury Shopping Center, at 410 S. Oyster Bay Road in Hicksville, where it has been since 1997.

“We anticipate that our T.J. Maxx store … in Hicksville will relocate to the Woodbury Plaza this fall. We have approximately 70 associates who work in our current location and they are expected to transfer to the new location,” said Bethany Crocetti, spokeswoman for The TJX Companies Inc., the Framingham, Massachusetts, company that owns T.J. Maxx.

Both the Plainview and Hicksville shopping centers are within the Town of Oyster Bay.

Built in 1955, the Plainview shopping center is a 102,000-square-foot development. It  has gone more high-end in the past few years with the addition new tenants, such as the 2020 arrivals of The French Workshop, which is part of a Queens-based artisanal bakery chain of three shops, and Trek Bicycle Store, which is owned by a Waterloo, Wisconsin-based retailer, Delavale said.

Other existing tenants include Bath & Body Works; clothing stores Loft, Gap and Banana Republic; and grocer Trader Joe’s.

The change in the tenant mix helped spur T.J. Maxx’s decision to relocate from across the street, Delavale said.

“I think, No. 1, because we have a much superior tenant mix to complement their merchandise.  I think we have more visibility and I think it had something to do with … the physical layout of their existing store,” he said.

Crocetti did not detail why T.J. Maxx was relocating, beyond saying, “We are always assessing and reviewing our real estate strategies and our decision to relocate this store reflects that thinking.”

Josam Associates LLC, a Smithtown-based entity that owns Woodbury Shopping Center, did not return a Newsday request for comment.

In January, Michael Levin, president of Josam Associates, told Newsday that discount grocer Aldi was considering leasing two-thirds of the space T.J. Maxx occupies after the off-price store vacates.

On Friday, Aldi said it did “not have any information to share about a potential Aldi store opening in Hicksville.”

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.