The bullseye is up in Bridgehampton. Crews mounted the Target sign on the facade at Bridgehampton Commons this week, and the company has confirmed the date that matters: the store opens October 11. When the doors open at 2044 Montauk Highway, one of the most watched retail vacancies on Long Island, the building where America's last full-size Kmart went dark, goes back to work.

The building every Long Islander has shopped

Few buildings on the Island carry as much retail history as this one. Over roughly fifty years, the big box at Bridgehampton Commons has been a Woolco, then a Caldor, then a Kmart, a run that traces almost the entire arc of the American discount store. Generations of South Fork families bought school clothes, beach chairs and Christmas lights under its roof, whatever name happened to be on the sign.

The Kmart era ended on October 20, 2024, and it ended with national attention. By then the Bridgehampton store was the last full-size Kmart operating anywhere in the continental United States, and its final weeks drew news crews and nostalgic shoppers making a last pass under the blue light. When it closed, the chain that once ran more than two thousand stores was effectively gone from the American mainland, and Bridgehampton had an empty anchor store on its hands.

The turn of history is sharper than it first looks. Kmart and Target opened their first stores in the same year, 1962, two answers to the same idea of the American discount store. One chain shrank through the Sears merger and the 2018 bankruptcy that followed until a single store on Montauk Highway was all that remained on the mainland. The other is now moving into that store.

What Target is building

The answer arrived faster than most anchor vacancies get one. Target committed to the space, and construction crews have spent the past year gutting the interior down to the shell and rebuilding it as one of the company's flex format stores, a design Target uses where a full-size location does not fit. At about 90,000 square feet it will be smaller than the chain's typical Long Island stores, but the departments will read as full Target: groceries, home essentials, apparel and electronics, with a CVS Pharmacy and a Starbucks operating inside.

The rebuild goes well past paint. The project includes prefabricated fitting rooms, upgraded restrooms and a fully redesigned stockroom, along with a refreshed facade, an improved parking lot and new signage outside. Long Island construction firm EW Howell is building it, working with Sargenti Architects, which means the conversion of the East End's most famous empty box is itself a local job.

A first for the South Fork

The October 11 opening gives the South Fork its first Target. Until now, the run to the nearest bullseye has meant a serious drive up island, which is exactly why rumors about this space excited Hamptons shoppers from the moment Kmart announced it was leaving. Year-round residents east of the Shinnecock Canal have long had thin options for everyday basics at chain-store prices, a gap that grows in winter when seasonal shops close. A 90,000 square foot general merchandise store with a grocery section changes the weekly routine for a lot of households from Southampton to Montauk.

The store has also been staffing up for months. Target began hiring for the Bridgehampton location in the spring, adding a round of year-round retail jobs to an East End economy that skews heavily seasonal.

What it means for October

Opening on October 11 puts the store in business just as the East End's seasonal rhythm turns, after the summer crowds thin but well before holiday shopping begins. For the South Fork, the practical meaning is simple: the days of building a Target run into a trip west are nearly over. And for anyone who felt a pang when the last blue light went out in 2024, there is something fitting in the same doors opening again under a new sign, the fourth discount retailer to take its turn in a building that has been selling Long Islanders the stuff of everyday life since the 1970s.