Walmart seeks to turn East Meadow store into supercenter, in retailer's latest expansion bid on Long Island

Walmart is planning to turn another Long Island store into a supercenter with a full-service grocery store, in the discount retailer's latest bid to carve out a wider footprint in the area.

The retailer in mid-August submitted plans to the Town of Hempstead seeking approval to expand its East Meadow store to create a supercenter, according to town spokesman Brian Devine.

"The applicant is looking to expand its building area by incorporating the [space vacated by] Stop & Shop next door," Devine wrote in an email.

This follows Walmart's plan also to expand its Islandia store into a supercenter, which Newsday previously reported.

Walmart Inc., headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, declined to comment on its plans for its stores in East Meadow and Islandia.

The company has 14 stores on Long Island, including a Sam’s Club in Medford; a Neighborhood Market, which is a grocery store, in Levittown; and three supercenters, two of which were expanded from existing general merchandise stores more than a decade after originally opening.

Walmart is growing on Long Island by expanding its existing general-merchandise stores instead of opening completely new supercenters because there is a shortage of the vacant, massive spaces the retailer wants, a real estate expert said. The company is the largest grocery retailer in the nation, but on Long Island, Stop & Shop ranks first and has more than three times as many stores.

Expansion plans in East Meadow

Walmart opened its East Meadow store at 2465 Hempstead Tpke. in Clearmeadow Plaza in January 2002.

The space next door that Walmart wants to expand into was vacated by a Stop & Shop supermarket last October.

Walmart wants to increase its East Meadow store by 63,300 square feet, or 54%, to 180,526 square feet, said Devine, adding that the town is expected to make a decision on the plan in six months.

In Islandia, Walmart submitted plans to the village in February seeking approval to expand its space there by 49,451 square feet, or 38%, to 178,206 square feet for a supercenter, said Gerald Peters, the village’s manager and building inspector. Walmart is seeking to add a supermarket and a drive-thru for a pharmacy in the store, which opened in January 2003 at 1850 Veterans Memorial Hwy. in the Islandia Shopping Center.

The Islandia board of trustees is expected to vote on approving that plan in three to six months, Peters said.

A Stop & Shop also closed in the Islandia Shopping Center in 2022, but that former supermarket space now is being split by a 40,000-square-foot Tractor Supply Co. store, which opened in June, and an approximately 30,000-square-foot Burlington, which opened in July.

One-stop shopping destinations

First launched in 1988, Walmart's supercenters are set up to be one-stop shopping destinations that include full-service supermarkets, clothing, home furnishings and electronics, as well as specialty shops, such as nail and hair salons, and fast-food restaurants.

The average size of a Walmart supercenter is 178,000 square feet, while the average size of a regular Walmart general merchandise store is 105,000 square feet, according to the retailer’s annual report released in April. The average size of a Walmart Neighborhood Market is 42,000 square feet.

Supercenters are Walmart’s preferred store format, given that groceries generate the most revenue for the retailer.

Groceries accounted for nearly 60% of Walmart’s $462.4 billion in total net sales in its fiscal year 2025, which ended on Jan. 31, according to its last annual report.

There are 5,206 Walmart stores in the United States: 3,560 supercenters, 354 discount stores, 672 Neighborhood Markets, 20 small-format stores and 600 Sam’s Clubs.

On Long Island, Walmart is seeking to grow by expanding its existing stores instead of opening completely new supercenters because it is difficult to find the large amount of space it needs for new construction, said Brian Schuster, a vice chairman at Ripco Real Estate LLC in Woodbury who focuses on retail.

“They want a …[150,000- to 180,000-square-foot] building, or they need at least 15 acres to build it. … Neither one exists,” said Schuster, who does not represent Walmart.

Walmart’s Valley Stream store, which opened in 2003, became Walmart's first supercenter on Long Island in 2014, when it was expanded by 41% to 169,000 square feet.

In 2020, Walmart expanded its then-13-year-old Farmingdale store by 40% to create a 205,000-square-foot supercenter.

The retailer did open a completely new supercenter, a 197,000-square-foot store, in a new retail and residential development called The Boulevard in Yaphank in 2021.

Despite Walmart's expanding footprint on Long Island, Stop & Shop is the area's biggest grocer, with 46 stores accounting for 16.6% of the market share when compared with all types of grocery sellers, according to a June report from Food Trade News, a Columbia, Maryland-based publication.

Walmart ranks seventh on Long Island, with 5.7% of the market share, according to the report.

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.