Costco, Target, Best Buy, oh my!

<i>Big-box retailers are rolling into the city</i>

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.

In 2010, Bob’s will open its first store in Queens at Muss Development’s Sky View Center shopping mall at the Sky View Parc development on College Point Boulevard in Flushing, the borough’s largest new retail development. The center will have a total of 800,000 square feet of retail space. BJ’s Wholesale Club, whose opening was pushed back to February from this month, will occupy 121,000 square feet at the center. Sky View will be home to Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, Old Navy, Best Buy, Marshalls, Sky Foods, Famous Footwear, Applebee’s and Chuck E. Cheese.

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BJ’s will open its second location in Brooklyn in 2010 at Remsen Avenue and Avenue D in the Canarsie section. Sources have confirmed that the company will open in Bensonhurst, in a Thor Equities shopping center to be developed at 1824 Shore Parkway, a former bus depot near Caesar’s Bay shopping center.

In 2010, Vornado Realty Trust’s Rego Park II, the 600,000-square-foot retail complex, is slated to open. Tenants will include Queens’ first Century 21, a Home Depot and Kohl’s.

Michael Stoler is a columnist for The Real Deal and host of real estate programs “The Stoler Report” and “Building New York” on CUNY TV and on WEGTV in East Hampton. His radio show, “The Michael Stoler Real Estate Report,” airs on 1010 WINS on Saturdays and Sundays. Stoler is a director at Madison Realty Capital as well as an adjunct professor at NYU Real Estate Institute, and a former contributing editor and columnist for the New York Sun.