Target opens first store in the Hamptons, taking space Kmart vacated 2 years ago

Target’s first store in the Hamptons is open, filling a space vacated by the last full-size Kmart in the continental United States two years ago.

Located at 2102 Montauk Hwy. in Bridgehampton, the new Target held a soft opening Wednesday, and its grand opening will be at 7 a.m. Sunday.

Kmart’s exit left the Hamptons without a big-box store, with the closest Walmart to that formerly vacant space being nearly 25 miles away in Riverhead. Before the Bridgehampton Target's opening this week, that retailer's closest store was about 23 miles away, also in Riverhead.

Southampton officials and residents are now hoping Target fulfills some communities’ needs for clothes, health and beauty products, household goods and groceries under one roof.

The new store has a Starbucks and will be adding a CVS pharmacy in early November, Target spokeswoman Eboni Wingo said.

The store, which also will have drive-up service, order pickup and same-day delivery, is expected to employ 140 workers, Target said.

Minneapolis-based Target Corp. has more than 2,000 U.S. stores, including the 21 now on Long Island.

The Bridgehampton store, which is the retailer’s eastmost on the Island, is among eight new Target stores in six states — New York, Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia — that will have grand openings on Sunday.

At 91,036 square feet, the Bridgehampton location is smaller than the retailer's typical stores, which average about 125,000 square feet, but it’s not a small-format store.

And it looks somewhat different from the retailer’s other locations, given the Town of Southampton’s strict zoning and building code requirements that retailers “reflect its coastal vibes” and the aesthetic expectations of Hamptons residents and officials, Target said.

Instead of the retailer’s signature shade of red for its store names and bull's-eye logo, the new store's sign and logo are white on a gray background.

Lighted signs are not permitted in the shopping center, so the Bridgehampton Target’s is being lighted from overhead, Ken McQuade, a principal architect for store design at Target, told Newsday in August. And the large, red round bollards typically in front of Target stores are gray.

The store is in Bridgehampton Commons, a 306,060-square-foot shopping center where other tenants include a King Kullen supermarket, Staples, Barnes & Noble, TJ Maxx and a HomeGoods/Marshalls combination store.

The Kmart that was in the shopping center closed in October 2024 after 25 years in operation, ending an era for a once-dominant discount retailer.

The closing left Kmart with one small store in the continental United States — in Miami. There also is a store in Guam and another in the U.S. Virgin Islands.