Whole Foods to open new store at The Shops at SunVet in March
The Whole Foods Market at The Shops at SunVet in Holbrook, seen Wednesday, will open in March. Credit: Barry Sloan
Whole Foods Market is opening a new store at The Shops at SunVet next month as the $93 million redevelopment of the Holbrook retail site winds down.
The organic and natural foods grocer will open its full-service supermarket at the shopping center March 5, according to a statement from the Austin, Texas-based retailer.
The 40,000-square-foot supermarket will be the largest tenant on the property.
The supermarket, which will be Whole Foods’ eighth store on Long Island, will include a prepared food department with hot items and salad bars, a bakery, a specialty department dedicated to cheesemakers and artisan producers, and 290 craft beers and ciders, the grocer said.
The store will employ 160 workers, said Whole Foods, which is owned by Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc.
Located at 5801 Sunrise Hwy. on an 18-acre site, the property formerly known as Sun Vet Mall was redeveloped from a struggling, enclosed mall to an open-air shopping center with a more upscale mix of tenants.
The redevelopment, which started in 2023, reduced the size of the retail space by 40% to 169,628 square feet.
The shopping center is now 93% occupied or committed to incoming tenants, and construction is mostly complete, except for the customizations by tenants, Becca Wing, vice president of investments at Regency Centers Corp., told Newsday in an email. Regency is the Jacksonville, Florida-based real estate investment trust that is the lead partner in the redevelopment.
All the tenants at the shopping center will be new, except for Citibank, which was in the mall before the redevelopment started. The bank has moved to a new, freestanding building.
Other tenants include Nordstrom Rack, fast-casual eatery Wonder, Hand & Stone Massage & Facial Spa, Teachers Federal Credit Union, Wells Fargo Bank, Starbucks, Aspen Dental and golf shop Club Champion.
Cosmetics store Sephora will open Friday.
Other businesses that have signed leases at the shopping center but haven’t opened yet include prescription eyeglasses store Warby Parker, J.Crew Factory, Crumbl Cookies, Nava Health, Mógū Modern Chinese Kitchen and California Closets.
Most of the tenants will be open by this summer, Wing said.
Built in 1973, the once-bustling Sun Vet Mall had been losing tenants for years before the redevelopment started.
Two major anchors — a Toys R Us store and a Pathmark supermarket — closed after their parent companies filed for bankruptcy protection in 2017 and 2015, respectively.
Blumenfeld Development Group Ltd. in Syosset signed a 99-year ground lease with the mall’s owner, Marvin L. Lindner Associates LLC, in 2022, giving BDG the right to redevelop and operate it.
In 2023, BDG entered into a joint venture with Regency, which holds a majority interest in the deal, to redevelop the mall. Regency renamed the mall that year.
Whole Foods also has a store planned for another shopping center Regency is redeveloping, Crystal Brook Corner, formerly called Mount Sinai Shopping Center.
Regency, which announced last week that it had bought the shopping center, plans to redevelop it and change the tenant lineup to one with a mix of local, regional and national businesses, the company said last week.
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.
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