Shoppers who once frequented the Sears at Lake Grove’s Smith Haven Mall may soon have a reason to return to the space: medical care.
Stony Brook Medicine’s Clinical Practice Management plans to open an outpatient facility at the Suffolk County mall, Newsday reports. Stony Brook University is in the process of designing the care facility.
The center will include an infusion site for non-cancer patients and a pain management center, in addition to offices for physicians and outpatient spaces for the Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, located four miles down the road.
Steel Equities purchased the former Sears store and the Sears Auto Center from Transformco in June. Stony Brook locked itself into a 31-year lease at the mall, according to Newsday. The first phase of the center is expected to open in the spring 2022.
Read more
National
The man who raided Sears for its real estate riches
Commercial
New York
Sears closing up shop in New York City
It’s not yet clear exactly how Stony Brook will repurpose the site for its needs. The parcel sits on more than 19 acres, situated in both Lake Grove and Smithtown. The two-level building encompasses 169,000 square feet, while the auto center provides another 49,000 square feet.
This isn’t the only former Sears Steel Equities plans to repurpose for medical care. Newsday reports the Bethpage-based real estate company is doing something similar in Garden City, where NYU Langone Health is planning on opening an ambulatory care center.
Sears stores have been disappearing across the nation. The Sears at the Sunrise Mall in Massapequa — the last remaining Long Island location — closed earlier this month. It ended a 62-year run for the company on the peninsula.
Sears has been gutted since the retailer began bankruptcy proceedings in October 2018, since taken over by Transformco. Retail consulting firm Creditntell/F&D Reports previously told Newsday there were less than three dozen Sears locations left in the entire United States.
[Newsday] — Holden Walter-Warner