Aldi to open its first grocery store in Nassau County 

Aldi plans to break into Nassau County.

The German-owned discount grocer entered the Long Island market in 2011 and now has six stores on the Island — all in Suffolk County.

But the fast-growing retailer plans to make a move into a store that will be built from the ground up in Green Acres Commons in Valley Stream and open by spring 2020, said Jeremy Isaacs, a partner in the Jericho office of Ripco Real Estate.

“They’ve waited for the right spot. And it’s an ideal co-tenancy for them. And they will continue to be selective in their locations for Nassau County,” said Isaacs, Aldi’s exclusive broker in the metro area.

Other tenants in Green Acres Commons, an approximately 300,000-square-foot shopping center on West Sunrise Highway across from Green Acres Mall, include Dick’s Sporting Goods, HomeGoods, Burlington, Five Below and 24 Hour Fitness.

On Thursday, Hempstead Town's Industrial Development Agency approved a lease agreement between the shopping center and Aldi for a 22,033-square-foot store, the IDA said. The agency holds title to the property because Green Acres Commons operates under a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement the IDA approved in 2015.

Green Acres Commons and Green Acres Mall are owned by a Santa Monica, California, real estate investment trust, Macerich Co., which did not return a call for comment.

Aldi also is not talking about its plans for Nassau County. “At this time, we do not have any information to share about potential Aldi stores opening in … Valley Stream,” Bruce Persohn, Aldi South Windsor Division vice president, said in a statement.

Aldi had the 16th largest market share among all grocery stores in the United States in 2018, about $9.5 billion, said Jon Hauptman, senior director of Inmar, a retail industry analytics company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. 

But on Long Island Aldi hasn't cracked the top 20 among all stores that sell groceries, including drugstores and warehouse clubs, or the top 10 among supermarkets, according to a June report by Food Trade News, a Columbia, Maryland-based publication. 

Competition for budget-conscious customers is tightening locally. Lidl, also a German discount grocer that has been compared to Aldi, is breaking into the Long Island market with its purchase in January of 27 stores in New York and New Jersey owned by Bethpage-based Best Market, including all 24 on the Island.

Aldi, whose American headquarters are in Batavia, Illinois, is expanding quickly and has more than 1,900 stores in 36 states. “We’re investing more than $5 billion to remodel and expand to 2,500 stores by the end of 2022, making us the third-largest U.S. grocer by store count,” Persohn said earlier this week.

The company is on track to launch more than 130 new stores in the United States this year, and it opened more than 250 in 2017 and 2018, he said.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.com@ToryParrish1

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.