Nation’s Last Full-Sized Kmart Shuts Down in Bridgehampton

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A significant chapter of America’s retail history is set to close in a few weeks in the Hamptons.

Kmart, a big-box retailer that once reigned over its competition in the 1990s, is set to close its doors at Bridgehampton Commons in the Hamptons on Oct. 20, Newsday reported. The store at 2044 Montauk Highway has been operating for 25 years.

Kmart is the anchor tenant of the shopping center, occupying 90,000 square feet — nearly a third — of the 287,000-square-foot complex. Kmart paid $7 million to assume Caldor’s lease in 1999. The lease lasted through 2019, but Kmart agreed to multiple 10-year extensions to stay put.

The shopping center is owned by Kimco Realty, which declined to comment on the closing. Kmart is owned by Transformco.

When the last sale is made there, it will mark the end of an era, as the Bridgehampton Kmart is the discount retailer’s last full-sized store in the United States. The last store standing will be a small location in Miami, though several stores also exist in territories such as Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

There’s some irony in Kmart’s ability to hang on in the Hamptons, one of the toniest locales in the nation. Because boutique stores reign supreme, other discount retailers such as Target and Walmart are nowhere to be found, leaving Kmart with a strong grasp of the area’s bargain shoppers.

In 2018, 13 years after combining with Sears, the holding company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. A year later, Transformco purchased the assets and began wiping out stores.

More than 2,000 Kmart stores were operating in the early 2000s, including Long Island locations in West Babylon, Farmingville, Bohemia and Huntington. At its height in the 1990s, the company’s 2,300 stores led big-box retail nationwide.

— Holden Walter-Warner

Read more 1 of 2 surviving Kmarts is in … the Hamptons?

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