Retail Roundup: Walmart backtracks on 24-hour LI store
A Walmart Supercenter proposed for Yaphank, seen in a rendering above, was originally planned to be open 24 hours a day. Credit: Walmart Inc.
Walmart has scrapped plans for a proposed Yaphank store to be a 24-hour location, after hearing residents’ objections to possible noise and traffic issues.
The world’s largest retailer in February said it planned to build a 24-hour supercenter — a large store with a full-service supermarket — in a Yaphank residential and retail complex called The Boulevard, which is under development on William Floyd Parkway just north of the Long Island Expressway at Exit 68N.
But Walmart has scaled back the hours of operation of the proposed store based on “feedback” from some residents near the Yaphank site, the discount retailer said last week.
Walmart is not saying definitively what the hours would be.
“It’s early, and we’re still working through the process,” said Phillip Keene, spokesman for Bentonville, Arkansas-based Walmart Inc.
But Brian Ferruggiari of AVR Realty Co., the Yonkers-based developer of The Boulevard, said the proposed Walmart would be open from 6 a.m. to midnight daily.
Construction on the 292,568-square-foot retail section of The Boulevard, including Walmart, has not started, as the property owner, Rose-Breslin Associates LLC, is awaiting Brookhaven Town's approval of the site plan it submitted in February.
Most of Walmart’s 3,570 supercenters nationwide are open 24 hours a day.
Of Walmart’s 12 stores on Long Island, only the one in Valley Stream is a supercenter. But that store is open from 7 a.m. to midnight daily.
Walmart is converting its 12-year-old Farmingdale store to a 24-hour supercenter in a project expected to be done by fall 2020.
The company's supercenters average 182,000 square feet and include grocery stores and in-store businesses, such as fast-food eateries, banks and nail salons.
In addition to a grocery store, the 197,484-square-foot supercenter proposed for Yaphank would have online grocery pickup, a pharmacy and an auto care center.
But some residents in two condominium communities near the proposed Walmart site — Colonial Woods and Whispering Pines — had objected to all-day store hours because of concerns about overnight noise and traffic from shoppers, and from tractor-trailers making deliveries to the store, said Whispering Pines resident Gordon Reickoff, a member of the Whispering Pines/Colonial Woods Neighborhood Alliance homeowners group.
The entrance to the condo communities, which have a total of 544 units, is on the north boundary of the property where the Walmart is planned, Reickoff said.
“It’s not the right location for something like that. Personally, I don’t think it’s necessary,” said Reickoff, who contacted Brookhaven Councilman Michael Loguercio about residents’ concerns a few months ago.
In February and March, residents discussed their concerns with Loguercio at two community meetings attended by about 100 people each and at a meeting at Brookhaven Town Hall, where representatives from Walmart and the developer of The Boulevard were among about 275 people attending, the councilman said.
“People in that community had major concerns about having a commercial business such as Walmart in a residential area and adjacent to the residential area. And it’s my duty to protect them, and at the same time I don’t want to hinder business in any means,” said Loguercio, who contacted Walmart on behalf of residents.
The Boulevard is a 322-acre development formerly called the Meadows at Yaphank. Under construction in the $450 million complex are upscale rental apartments and for-sale condos and townhomes, an assisted-living facility and a hotel to be called Home2 Suites by Hilton.
The Beechwood Organization, based in Jericho, is building the for-sale homes.
Retail Roundup is a column about major retail news on Long Island — store openings, closings, expansions, acquisitions, etc. — that is published online and in the Monday paper. To read more of these columns, click here. If you have news to share, please send an email to Newsday reporter Tory N. Parrish at tory.parrish@newsday.com.
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.
