California Closets, Strong Pilates among new tenants headed to The Shops at SunVet under $93M revamp

A new look for a long-struggling retail site is taking shape in Holbrook. 

A $93 million redevelopment, which started with demolition work at the former Sun Vet Mall in 2023, is transforming the site into an open-air shopping center with a more upscale mix of tenants.

“Construction is substantially complete on the [two] main buildings,” Eric Davidson, spokesman for Regency Centers Corp., told Newsday in an email Tuesday. Regency is the Jacksonville, Florida-based real estate investment trust that is the lead partner in the redevelopment. 

Renamed The Shops at SunVet in 2023, the Holbrook property is getting an almost entirely new lineup of tenants, including incoming anchors Whole Foods Market and off-price department store Nordstrom Rack.

Three newly signed tenant leases are with custom home-storage designer California Closets, Strong Pilates studio and golf shop Club Champion, Davidson said, adding that Regency will soon announce several more incoming restaurant tenants.

Now, about 70% of the shopping center is leased to 20 tenants, but only four — Wells Fargo Bank, Starbucks, Citibank and Aspen Dental — are open at the site at this point.

Founded in 1978, Phoenix-headquartered California Closets has more than 140 North American showrooms, about half of which are franchises.

The 1,529-square-foot SunVet store will be a franchise owned by a Long Island family — Tony and Vera DeVincenzo and their son, Anthony.

They also own two other California Closets locations — a 2,300-square-foot showroom that opened in Sayville in 2017 and a 1,200-square-foot manufacturing facility that opened in Ronkonkoma in 1985, Vera DeVincenzo said.

The new SunVet location will have the advantage of being in a prominent location among complementary tenants, she said.

“The benefit of being in Holbrook is that we’re going to be right on the highway, easier access. … I’m hoping that the tenants will be sharing similarities in customers, like people who are looking for our products would also be shopping at the high-end retail stores they’re putting in,” she said.

Strong Pilates and Club Champion did not respond to Newsday's requests for comment.

Other businesses that have previously signed leases to open locations in SunVet include prescription eyeglasses store Warby Parker, clothing retailer J.Crew Factory, Crumbl Cookies, Sephora, Nava Health, Teachers Federal Credit Union, Mógū Modern Chinese Kitchen, Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spa, fast-casual eatery Wonder and M Nail Bar.

Citibank, which was the only remaining tenant in the mall when new construction started in spring 2024, relocated to a new 3,800-square-foot freestanding building last spring.

Construction work has begun on the freestanding building that will be shared by Shake Shack and Tony’s Tacos, Davidson said.

Built in 1973, the once-bustling, 282,000-square-foot enclosed mall, which sat on 18 acres, lost tenants for years, including two major anchors — an approximately 100,000-square-foot Toys R Us store and a 60,000-square-foot Pathmark supermarket that closed after their parent companies filed for bankruptcy protection in 2017 and 2015, respectively.

The redevelopment project is reducing the retail space of the property, which is located at 5801 Sunrise Hwy., near the intersection with Veterans Memorial Highway. 

The project aims to improve the appeal of the property by turning it into a 168,000-square-foot open-air shopping center, with its two largest buildings created by using some of the existing mall structure. Six new, smaller outparcels are being built around the two largest buildings.

Rebecca Wing, vice president of investments at Regency, told Newsday in March that most of the new tenants would open this year. But that timeline has changed because it took longer than expected for the retail site to get utility connections, Davidson said Tuesday.

“Businesses are expected to open throughout the fall and winter, with the majority open by spring,” he said.

Whole Foods will be the largest tenant in SunVet, where the natural and organic foods grocer will occupy a 40,000-square-foot space. 

In March, Newsday reported that the grocery store will open this year.

On Tuesday, Davidson declined to comment on Whole Foods’ plans for its opening, and directed inquiries to the grocer.

Owned by Seattle-based Amazon.com, Whole Foods declined to comment about whether its timeline had changed.

SunVet’s second-largest tenant will be Nordstrom Rack, which will occupy a 26,780-square-foot space beside Whole Foods.

The Nordstrom Rack store will open Oct. 2, according to the Seattle-based retailer's website.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

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.