Riverdale’s Stella D’oro cookie factory will be sold to developers Metropolitan Realty Associates and Angelo, Gordon & Co. to build a shopping center, the Wall Street Journal reported. The new 162,000-square-foot center will most likely be anchored by a BJ’s Wholesale Club, sources said.
The bakery is being sold by Brynwood Partners, a private equity fund based in Greenwich, Conn., which purchased Stella D’oro in 2006 in a futile effort to turn the manufacturer around. The bakery’s operations ended about two years ago, putting about 150 employees out of work.
Terms of the sale were not immediately available but the facility was listed in the low $20 million range, the Journal said. [more]

Already home to a shopping center featuring Best Buy, Toys R Us and Kohl’s, Brooklyn’s southeastern waterfront could get two more big-box retail centers if developers get their way, the Wall Street Journal reported. Joe Sitt’s Thor Equities is seeking approval for a $150 million project to build a 200,000-square-foot shopping center and 2.4-acre public waterfront on a pier near Gravesend Bay. Sitt has already secured a tentative 20-year lease with BJ’s Wholesale Club to anchor the site. Adjacent to that waterfront is a 4.5 acre plot of land owned by the Cropsey Family, which is soliciting developers to extend the site into the water and bring in big-box stores. There’s also a separate 15-acre plot near Four Sparrow March in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, where developers want to bring in a car dealership and retail center, that under environmental review but could run into delays because of a connection to the Carl Kruger corruption case. [more]

Rendering of Sky View Parc

[Update: 11:42 a.m.] Two big-box retailers are set to open their doors this week at Flushing’s new Sky View Parc complex. A new 180,000-square-foot Target will open to the public tomorrow morning at 8 a.m., a spokesperson for the retailer confirmed to [more]

Flushing’s new 800,000-square-foot shopping mall has opened its doors, the Wall Street Journal reported, with several big box retailers already lined up. BJ’s Wholesale Club, Best Buy and Bob’s Discount Furniture
are among the Sky View Center’s tenants that have already opened. The
development, which will be fully completed in 2011, is currently 75
percent leased, with additional retailers like Target, Marshall’s and
Old Navy expected to open their doors in the fall. Michael Dana,
president of Onex Real Estate Partners, the project’s developer, said
that he believes the mall’s location will make it a success. “There is
no shortage of patrons to Flushing, but it is dramatically underserved
from a retail and residential perspective,” Dana said. [WSJ]

[more]

A number of regional, national and international retailers are set to open first outposts in New York City. Last week, Costco, the largest membership warehouse club in the world, opened its first location in Manhattan in the 500,000-square-foot East River Plaza. Target will open its first Manhattan store in the same plaza next year. Best Buy, Marshalls and New York City’s first Bob’s Discount Furniture will join them. Bob’s has 35 stores throughout New York, New Jersey and New England. In the fall it opened its newest location in Carle Place, LI. [more]

Joseph Sitt, president of Thor Equities, has presented city officials with a proposal to build a 214,000-square-foot big-box mall, including a BJ’s Wholesale Club and three other stores, in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of South Brooklyn. The Department of City Planning is set to host an Oct. 29 hearing on the proposal, in order to gauge public opinion on the issue.

If you are a national or international retailer, it is your objective to operate a retail store in New York City, with Manhattan remaining the prize location. And in the down market, more national chains are capitalizing on lower rents. On July 31, Texas-based J.C. Penney opened its first Manhattan location at the Manhattan Mall. Later this year, residents of Manhattan will no longer have to travel to Astoria or Brooklyn to shop at Costco Warehouse Club. Costco is scheduled to open its long-awaited store in East Harlem at 116th Street at East River Plaza. [more]