Target Fills the Last Freestanding Kmart in America With a Store Built for the Hamptons

Target opened a new store inside Bridgehampton Commons on Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton, New York on October 11, replacing a building that spent nearly 50 years as three different retailers and, by the time it closed in October 2024, was the last full-size freestanding Kmart left in the continental United States. The roughly 90,000-square-foot store sits inside Kimco Realty's Bridgehampton Commons shopping center, alongside King Kullen, Gap, Ulta and T.J. Maxx, and it reopened less than two years after Kmart's lights went out there, a fast turn for an anchor box of that size.

The building had already lived two lives before Kmart. It opened decades ago as a Woolco, then became a Caldor, then Kmart, a run that ended when Transformco, the hedge-fund-controlled successor to Kmart's parent after Sears Holdings' 2018 bankruptcy, shut the doors. Kimco re-let and rebuilt the space in under two years, fast for an anchor box that size on Long Island's East End.

Southampton Town's design guidelines call for a coastal look, and Target built the store to match them rather than fight them. Store manager Adriana Fitzpatrick called it a departure from the chain's typical Long Island format, with an exterior and interior designed around the town's coastal theme. The store carries groceries, essentials, apparel and electronics, offers Drive Up and same-day delivery, and opened with an in-store Starbucks already running. A CVS pharmacy inside the store is set to open in November.

"The new Bridgehampton Target store is the perfect one-stop shop for busy residents and families in our community," Fitzpatrick said, adding that the company hired more than 130 team members for the location and plans seasonal hiring on top of that, with local nonprofit partnerships to follow.

Bridgehampton is the seventh of eight stores Target is opening this fall, a run that closes out a planned 30 new stores for 2026. It is also the smallest of the eight by a wide margin; seven of the other fall openings run larger than the chain's roughly 125,000-square-foot average format, and Bridgehampton is the one built down to fit its site and its town rather than up to a standard footprint.

On the company's second-quarter earnings call in August, CEO Michael Fiddelke told investors Target had "already this year...opened 24 new full-size stores, serving new neighborhoods and creating thousands of jobs," part of a multibillion-dollar push that also covers new supply-chain facilities and remodels. Chief Stores Officer Adrienne Costanzo said in the company's announcement of the fall openings that the new stores "create easier and more inspiring shopping experiences, and use technology to move smarter and faster every day." Target is aiming to build more than 300 new stores by 2035, a target that puts this year's two-year backfill in Bridgehampton inside a much longer building program.

Target's second-quarter net sales rose 5.3 percent year over year to $26.5 billion, with comparable sales up 3.8 percent, according to Retail Dive's coverage of the earnings call.

A roughly 50-year-old anchor box, vacant for under two years, back open under a different name: that is a faster recycle time than most dead big-box space gets, and it is worth tracking whether Kimco repeats it elsewhere in its portfolio. The Bridgehampton store's size, well under Target's typical new-build, suggests the chain will keep bending its format to fit a site rather than skip resort and seasonal markets that can't support a full-size box. Local coverage has already tied this opening to a Lidl closing nearby in Westhampton Beach, a reminder that East End retail turns over in both directions, not just toward growth. And with a CVS still to open inside the same building, Bridgehampton Commons is stacking three formats, discount, grocery-adjacent and pharmacy, into one redeveloped box, a model worth watching other landlords try on their own aging anchors.