Nordstrom Rack coming to Huntington Station

Nordstrom Rack plans to open a second Long Island store, in Huntington Station, the company said this week.

The outlet division of Seattle-based upscale retailer Nordstrom Inc. will open a 36,000-square-foot store in the Huntington Shopping Center on Route 110, just south of Walt Whitman Shops, in the fall. The new store will employ about 70 people from the local community and take over a spot vacated earlier this year by Toys R Us, Kendall Ault, a Nordstrom spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Nordstrom has a full-line department store in Garden City's Roosevelt Field and a Westbury Nordstrom Rack, which will relocate to the nearby Gallery at Westbury Plaza later this year. The new Huntington Shopping Center store is a "great location," Ault said.

"We believe we have a lot of customers in the community," Ault said. "We're always looking for ways to provide a convenient shopping experience for our customers, and we are hoping that this new location at the Huntington Shopping Center will allow us to do that."

The Nordstrom Rack's new location, announced Tuesday evening, caters to customers who "can handle the prices and handle the brands," said Marshal Cohen, retail analyst for The NPD Group, a Port Washington market research firm. The new location also shows that the outlet chain's stores can stand on their own and don't necessarily need to be located in an outlet center, he said.

"It [Nordstrom Rack] wants to be more of a destination," Cohen said.

The new store will feature the chain's more colorful branding, which was revamped last fall. Nordstrom Rack sells merchandise from Nordstrom stores and Nordstrom.com at 50 to 60 percent off original Nordstrom prices, as well as discounted items purchased especially for the outlet chain from brands carried at Nordstrom stores.