Barnes & Noble’s comeback is heading for the Hamptons.
The bookseller signed a 10-year lease for 9,000 square feet at Kimco Realty’s Bridgehampton Commons shopping center at 2044 Montauk Highway, Newsday reported. The store will be the company’s first on the South Fork, though it also recently opened a store in Riverhead.
The Bridgehampton space and slightly larger Riverhead location are each less than half the size of an average Barnes & Noble store. The retailer has been trying smaller footprints to reach markets where its typically massive spaces don’t make sense.
Kmart and King Kullen are the largest tenants at Bridgehampton Commons, combining for more than 150,000 square feet. Only 2,000 square feet remain available, according to Kimco’s website.
Barnes & Noble is expected to open its Hamptons store in October. Leasing representative Robert Wachtler declined to disclose the asking rent.
The bookseller is celebrating its 150th anniversary, which seemed uncertain if not unlikely when Amazon became the go-to retailer for book buyers. Barnes & Noble has shed 182 stores since January 2009, but has hung on as the lone nationwide brick-and-mortar bookseller.
The retailer is planning to open 30 stores this year after launching 16 last year. The combined number would be more than triple the number of openings of the entire 2010s.
Barnes & Noble is also trying to keep footholds in markets where it once reigned. The company was forced to close a store on the Upper East Side after 12 years, giving up 50,000 square feet that ultimately went to Target. But the company signed a 7,000-square-foot lease a block away.
Other retailers looking to boost their footprints include Burlington, Ross Stores and TJX Companies.
— Holden Walter-Warner
Read more
