Elmont’s new shopping center is springing out of winter with a flurry of new boutiques and restaurant openings.
Belmont Park Village, the 155-unit off-price shopping center that began its opening process in October, plans to introduce over a dozen new destinations for shoppers during the spring and summer months, Jason Katz, the village’s chief commercial officer, said. Many of these new openings are European brands’ first stateside locations.
“We have about 21 stores open now, with a couple more coming online very soon,” Katz said. “We have about two to three stores open a month. There’s always a kind of newness going on at the village.”
In April, shoppers will be able to visit newly opened Aquazzura, an Italian luxury shoe store and Solaris, which sells specialty sunglasses and eyewear brand, said Corey Tuttle, the shopping village’s senior vice president of marketing and communications.
Before the beginning of July, the village plans to welcome L’Occitane, Kurt Geiger, Kiton and Valentino, said Tuttle. He added that the village also plans for a flagship restaurant, American brasserie Hundredfold, the center’s first sit-down restaurant serving full course meals and desserts to open this spring.
As the summer continues, shoppers can expect to see additional well-known brands opening up, including Coach and Levi, Tuttle said. Slowear, Citizen, Paul Smith, Diesel and Kiton are among other boutique names with plans to open this year.
As the village continues to fill out its food offerings, it expects a total of seven permanent restaurants and cafes, including recently opened Belgium’s plant-based Le Botaniste and Long Island’s first Pret-A-Manger, Tuttle added. There are plans for additional pop-up carts to offer grab-and-go type food and drinks that customers can eat while sitting in the public outdoor areas.
The Belmont Park Village team is using the month of April to begin ramping up public programming, Tuttle said. Throughout the month shoppers will have the opportunity to participate in an egg guessing contest with a chance to win a $500 shopping spree, receive bouquets with qualifying purchases, take photos with the Easter Bunny, get Earth Day-inspired giveaways, and join a Village-wide egg hunt where they can win prizes.
Tuttle said the center plans to continue to hold more public events through the spring and summer and hopes to activate the public spaces, which are equipped with tables, chairs, and a handful of smaller cafe-type kiosks multiple times a month.
“We really treat the village as a community,” Tuttle said. “It’s kind of an immersive oasis experience. We have all these different activations in the village to add additional touch points for families to really enjoy the village outside of the shopping and make it more of a day out experience.”
As the village moves into further stages of development this season, Tuttle said all shoppers will be able to experience free parking, free shuttle service from the Elmont LIRR station, and free ‘hands-free’ shopping services, which provides village-goers with the option to store their purchases in one of the secure concierge locations as they continue to shop or walk around.
“We’re working to create something that’s truly special,” Katz said. “We want to create something unique and differentiated that New York and the country doesn’t have.”
Belmont Park Village is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays.
