Riverhead Waldbaum’s, closing Saturday, will not be re-opened as a supermarket, site owner’s rep says

A new supermarket will not be opening in the space being vacated by Waldbaum’s on Route 58, the real estate broker marketing the Riverhead Centre site told RiverheadLOCAL.

The shopping owner may be dividing the 60,311-square-foot store for lease to multiple tenants, said Jeremy Isaacs a broker at Ripco Real Estate in Jericho, which handles the shopping center.

Isaacs said this afternoon he has interest from several possible tenants but would not disclose their identities.

“But it won’t be a supermarket,” Isaacs said.

Riverhead has seen a proliferation of supermarkets in recent years, with the opening of Stop and Shop, Aldi and Costco to compete with existing supermarkets King Kullen, Waldbaum’s and Best Yet. Beyond that, discount stores like Wal-Mart, Target and Kmart and even pharmacy chains like Walgreens all have grocery departments.

“It’s definitely impacted the industry. Stores like Wal-Mart are able to undercut the supermarkets on price and they don’t have good jobs, union workers, salaries or benefits,” said Nicki Kateman, spokesperson for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 338, which represented the employees at the Riverhead Waldbaum’s store.

King Kullen is closing its Riverhead store next month when its lease at the Route 58 location it has occupied for four decades expires. The company decided not to renew, King Kullen senior vice president Joseph Brown said last week.

Waldbaum’s will open its doors for the last time Saturday morning. It opened in its current location in Riverhead Centre in July 2003; prior to that Waldbaum’s was located in the space currently occupied by Staples, where it opened in the mid-1980s.

“It’s heartbreaking. There’s no other word for it,” union spokesperson Kateman said today.

Tears welled up in the eyes of a longtime store employee this morning as she spoke about the closing.

“It’s hard to even talk about it,” she said.

The store’s remaining stock — odds and ends left after being picked-over by bargain-hunters — was offered today at 70 to 90 percent off “original prices” The items were displayed on shelving along the front of the store. The aisles in the rest of the store were empty and dark.

Waldbaum’s will close its doors tomorrow at 6 p.m. Any unsold stock will be sold at an on-site auction on Thursday, Oct. 22, beginning at 10:30 a.m. There will also be an online auction beginning on that date.

A liquidation company is handling the auction, the Waldbaum’s employee said today.

Waldbaum’s was established in Brooklyn in 1904 by Austrian immigrants, Sam and Wolf Waldbaum. The family-owned company went public in 1961 — though the family retained 60-percent of its shares — moved its headquarters to Long Island in 1964 and grew over the next two decades to become the nation’s 12th-largest supermarket chain, with $1.76 billion in sales in 1985, the year before it was acquired by the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company for more than $287 million.

A&P filed a chapter 11 petition for bankruptcy protection on July 20, 2015. At the time of the filing, A&P operated 296 stores under the brand names A&P, Best Cellars, Food Basics, The Food Emporium, Pathmark, Superfresh and Waldbaum’s.

The Waldbaum’s stores in Mattituck and Center Moriches were purchased in the bankruptcy sale by Key Food. Those sales were approved today by a federal bankruptcy court judge in White Plains.

Editor’s note: This article was amended to reflect a correction about the nature of Wal-Mart’s grocery department, which was incorrectly characterized in the original article as “a full grocery store.” The new store includes a large grocery department but does not sell fresh meats and has a limited selection of fresh produce.