By JOSEPH KELLARD
³I¹m moving there because other things are coming in,² Brower said in the midst of packing last Wednesday. ³As far as I know, their leases are signed. ...We certainly think it will increase our visibility.²
Robert Gavriyelov, owner of Forever Diamonds jewelry store at the recently closed Vendors Market in Island Park, is moving into the Great Lincoln with the same understanding. ³It¹s newly renovated, it¹s a great location and it¹s bringing in other businesses that I like,² Gavriyelov said.
Feet First and Forever Diamonds are among several businesses that have or are about to sign leases with Great Lincoln, according to Jerry Welkis, president of Welco Realty of New Rochelle, N.Y., and Paramus, N.J., the latest Realtor hired by shopping center owner Maro Goldstone. ³The shopping center is expected to be pretty well leased up within the next 30 to 60 days or so,² Welkis said last Thursday.
Moe¹s Southwest Grill, a national Tex-Mex chain, has signed a lease and will take the unit where Baja Fresh, a Mexican chain restaurant, was to open but never did, and a Chinese restaurant should ³sign a lease any day now,² Welkis said. While he declined to name the other businesses that plan to move in but have not yet signed leases, Welkis indicated that his company has a lease with a major women¹s apparel chain (which Gavriyelov believes is Annie Sez) and a children¹s apparel chain, and added that the women¹s store is expected to sign ³within a matter of two to three weeks, and then the children¹s store within 30 days thereafter.²
Moreover, while a few units will remain vacant, and while the status of the existing Lincoln Stationery store and Oceanside Meats is still up in the air, Welkis said, he added that he is ³having ongoing conversations with some other [potential] tenants as well.²
In 2003, while the first-ever facade reconstruction was under way at the 50-year-old shopping center, Goldstone said she was actively interviewing potential tenants and compiling a list of possible-to-definite prospects to occupy the many vacant units. Goldstone had mainly expressed interest in attracting high-end women¹s and men¹s clothing stores, such as Anne Taylor and Kenneth Cole, she said, as well as such stores as Banana Republic, Pier 1 Imports and Annie Sez, and that a jewelry store, a children¹s bookstore and a beauty spa were on her wish list.
During the shopping center¹s facelift, only Baja Fresh signed a lease, and Maggie Moo¹s Ice Cream was a potential tenant. While the ice cream shop has opened, Baja Fresh never built its store because a franchiser ran into financial troubles, Welkis claimed, and only Vision Decision, an eyeglass store, has opened since. Among existing renters then, Lia¹s Pizzeria moved to a larger unit in the shopping center, Jandi¹s Nature Way moved its health food store to a nearby location on Long Beach Road to open a supermarket-type store in September 2003, and Smart Set Cleaners recently moved to the Marshall¹s Shopping Center on Long Beach Road. The other current tenants are Steinberg¹s Bakery and Play It Again Sports.
Goldstone had hoped the vacant units would be rented by December 2003 or January 2004, pending her obtaining the necessary permits to renovate the Great Lincoln more extensively, including new sidewalks, new light posts and an expanded island in the middle of a rebuilt and repaved parking lot. Yet while some of these renovations were made by mid-2004, the shopping center remained mostly vacant.
At the time, the Herald asked local and Long Island-wide real estate agents and developers about the reasons why some shopping centers remain vacant. The primary factors they cited were location, costs and the shopping center¹s past history and reputation. ³Depending on factors like the size of the store, its desirability, the use, and its location in the shopping center, the cost per square foot at the Great Lincoln can be anywhere from to the mid-20s to the low 30s,² Steve Kaufman, president of Lawrence-based Basser-Kaufman real estate investors and developers and owner of the T.J. Maxx shopping center, said then.
Others in the real estate community speculated that the Great Lincoln was perhaps having trouble renting units because they were being offered for the relatively high rate of $40 per square foot. ³I don¹t know exactly what they are offering the space out for,² said Harry Miller of Mill Road Realty in Rockville Centre, ³but I believe it is close to $40 a square foot or in the mid-30s.²
Jim Sansivero of CB Richard Ellis, an international real estate company, said that while an area such as Garden City, with the Roosevelt Field Mall, is among the strongest commercial markets on Long Island, Oceanside is a relatively secondary, though solid, business market. ³Oceanside is a very densely populated and a very active and mature retail area,² said Sansivero. ³Š Some centers unfortunately develop a stigma when they are vacant and, let¹s say, unattended for so long.²
Welkis believes the rates weren¹t really the cause of the continued vacancies after renovations were completed. ³I think the rent was competitive,² he said, declining to reveal what the rates were or are. ³I think that it was just a question of getting just the right mix of tenants in the center and convincing the owner of the right way to go with it. I think [we] had more success in convincing her about the right mix of tenants to go in there, and I think we were a little more persuasive than other Realtors.²
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
