Former Sears building in Hicksville to get 2 new tenants after cancellation of mixed-use project
Medical and educational tenants are planned for the former Sears building in Hicksville, seen here Tuesday. Credit: Newsday/Dawn McCormick
A former Sears building in Hicksville is slated to get new life with medical and educational tenants, after plans to bring a mixed-use residential, retail and office development to the site were canceled three years ago.
Lincoln Technical Institute, a trade school, and Antech Diagnostics, a veterinary medical laboratory, are the tenants planned for the building at 195 N. Broadway, according to building permit applications submitted to the Town of Oyster Bay in June, town spokesman Brian Nevin told Newsday in an email.
Lincoln Tech will open in late 2026, said Scott Watkins, spokesman for Lincoln Educational Services Corp., the Parsippany, New Jersey-based owner of the chain of vocational institutions.
The institute will offer one-year training programs in automotive, welding, heating, ventilation and air conditioning; and electrical/electronics programs, he said.
“There is a strong demand in the New York area for these careers,” Watkins said.
Of Lincoln Tech’s 22 locations in 12 states, the only one in New York State is in Queens.
Antech Diagnostics, headquartered in Fountain Valley, California, did not respond to requests for comment.
Steel Equities, a Bethpage-based real estate investment and development company, owns the Hicksville property. Steel Equities declined to comment Tuesday.
A two-level, 262,101-square-foot Sears department store, which opened in 1964, and a 45,615-square-foot Sears Auto Center on the Hicksville property closed in 2018.
Steel Equities’ plans submitted to the Town of Oyster Bay show that Lincoln Tech will take 64,410 square feet on the ground level of the former Sears building, while Antech Diagnostics will take 86,364 square feet split between the ground and lower levels, Nevin said.
The town is awaiting more information before the building permit applications can be processed, he said.
However, Steel Equities received building permits to do exterior facade work in May and for interior demolition and construction of “white boxes,” which are empty finished spaces for tenants, in October 2024 and February 2025, Nevin said.
Change of plans
The former Sears and auto center buildings, as well as an operating TD Bank and Chipotle restaurant, are on a 26.4-acre site where a mixed-use development was planned before Steel Equities bought the property in 2023.
The previous owner, Seritage Growth Properties, a Manhattan-based real estate investment trust that was spun off from Sears Holdings Corp. in 2015, submitted plans to Oyster Bay in 2017 to redevelop the site as a mixed-use development called Heritage Village.
The mixed-use development would have had market-rate apartments, as well as retail and office space, restaurants, a movie theater, a grocery store and parking.
The plan was later revised to remove a proposed big-box store and reduce the number of apartments from 596 to 425, after receiving feedback from the community and town officials. TD Bank and Chipotle were to continue leasing their buildings on the site after the redevelopment.
Seritage had planned to run morning and evening rush-hour shuttles between Heritage Village and the Hicksville Long Island Rail Road station, which is less than a mile away.
The town held a public hearing on the proposal in September 2020.
In 2022, when the proposed project was still going through the approval process with the town, Seritage canceled its redevelopment plan. The company sold the 26.4-acre site to Steel Equities for $51 million in 2023.
Seritage declined to comment Tuesday.
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.
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