Burlington Coat Factory inks big lease in Brooklyn

Burlington Coat Factory has leased a big space in Brooklyn and is already gearing up for year-end holiday sales.

The 45,000-square-foot store will encompass a former Staples and 24-Hour Fitness at Flatbush Center, according to Marcelo Klajnbart of ACHS Management, a division of Alex Adjmi’s A&H Acquisitions, the property’s owner.

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Burlington already has a similarly large store in Kings Plaza mall that opened in 2018 and another on Atlantic Avenue. The new store, at 2163 Tilden Avenue, includes the corner space at 1011 Flatbush Avenue, where Staples used to be.

Clifford Simon of CNS Realty represented Burlington in the deal.

Burlington Coat Factory’s first store was an outlet that opened in 1972 in Burlington, New Jersey. Its headquarters remains there.

The company’s original focus was on coats, but the business has expanded to become one of the nation’s top off-price retailers. At the end of the second quarter the publicly traded company operated 739 stores in 45 states and Puerto Rico. Over the past five years it has added 20 stores each year and is focused on reaching 1,000, despite the brick-and-mortar retail industry’s troubles, which were exacerbated by the pandemic.

While many retailers saw gains in online sales while stores were closed for Covid, Burlington stopped selling goods on its website as it was redesigned to focus on in-store promotions.

Sales fell by 45 percent in the first half of the year from the same period a year ago because of coronavirus closures and inventory issues. New York City allowed retail stores to reopen on June 8.

In its August guidance, CEO Michael Sullivan explained the company re-built store inventory levels and has since seen a “significant improvement” in sales. While Burlington expects that trend to continue, it still sees “a lot of “risk” in the third quarter, he said.

“In this uncertain environment we plan to manage our business conservatively,” Sullivan said in the release. “We have plenty of liquidity and we will use this to support opportunistic buys of fall merchandise and of pack-and-hold inventory that we will flow to stores next year.”