Super-sized shopping alert: A second BJ’s will be opening in Canarsie in November.
The big box store is set to draw crowds to the newly constructed Canarsie Plaza, at Avenue D and Remsen Avenue, in time for Christmas, said Kelly McFalls, a spokeswoman for the company.
“We’re very excited that the club will be open in time for people to have another outlet for holiday shopping,” McFalls noted.
However, McFalls could not confirm a specific grand opening date for the Natick, Mass.-based family-oriented warehouse store, which, she explained, features multi-packs rather than huge individual sizes of products that are targeted at businesses.
Brooklyn’s other BJ’s— open since 2002 — is located at Gateway Center, at Erskine Street off the Belt Parkway.
Hiring has already begun, with a line around the block reported at the Brooklyn Marriott, on Adams Street Downtown, where prospective employees were being interviewed last week.
Jobs are not the only benefit that BJ’s will bring to the community, said Gardy Brazela, the president of the Friends United Block Association. Brazela said the new location will be convenient for local residents, and promises by the mall’s developer to beautify the area around the mall — especially Foster Avenue — will be a boon to the neighborhood, he said.
“I’m looking forward to that,” Brazela stressed.
The new location will serve as “an economic engine for the community,” he added.
Nor is he alone in feeling that.
“It will clean up the area,” said Dorothy Turano, the district manager of Community Board 18. “I think it will be a benefit as far as serving the community, offering employment opportunities and beautifying the neighborhood.”
The original anchor tenant for Canarsie Plaza was Home Depot, which pulled out of the location in 2008, leaving Acadia Realty Trust, the developer, scrambling to find another retailer to fill the space. The location had also once been scouted by Costco, which has one store in Brooklyn, in Sunset Park, but Costco lost interest in the face of community opposition.
