The site of Century 21's original Bay Ridge flagship, empty for five years since the department store chain's collapse, is finally getting new tenants. Burlington and an unnamed national grocer have signed leases totaling 60,112 square feet at the $130 million Century Marketplace development, pushing the 120,000-square-foot project to 65 percent pre-leased ahead of a targeted 2028 opening.
The leases break down to 44,070 square feet for Burlington and 16,042 square feet for the still-unidentified grocer, according to Brooklyn Paper. Developers MCB Real Estate and Osiris Ventures have said the grocery tenant will be the first national grocer serving the immediate Southwest Brooklyn trade area, though its name has not been disclosed. Drew Gordon, an MCB Real Estate principal, said the grocery anchor and Burlington are intended to reignite a commercial corridor and unlock long-term value for Southwest Brooklyn.
A Five-Year Void on 86th Street
The 458 86th Street property was the original birthplace of Century 21 Department Store when it opened in 1961, operating for nearly six decades before the chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September 2020, according to Bisnow. Century 21 shuttered all of its physical locations during the COVID-19 pandemic, per the same account, leaving the 14-lot, 64,500-square-foot assemblage between Fourth and Fifth Avenues dark. MCB Real Estate and Osiris Ventures purchased the site from ASG Equities, the real estate arm of the Gindi family that owned Century 21, in July 2025 for $47.5 million.
Century Marketplace will encompass the former department store's full 14-lot footprint along 86th Street, per Brooklyn Paper's reporting on the developers' announcement. Architectural plans call for reconstructing the multi-story structures facing 86th Street into a two-story retail center with a new interior atrium and 200 feet of continuous street frontage connecting to a rear building on 87th Street, according to ABS Partners Real Estate. The project still has room for two junior anchors and 15,000 square feet of high-street shops, according to Brooklyn Paper, meaning more of the retail puzzle remains to be filled before the site is fully leased.
Financing and the Rest of the Century 21 Breakup
The developers secured $76.7 million in construction financing from Truist Bank to fund the site's transformation, a deal that required a complex structure to address the property's legal and tax requirements. Rebecca M. Cox, Truist's national real estate senior vice president and market manager, said the financing will help transform the site into a premier retail destination. JLL Capital Markets represented seller ASG Equities in the original property sale after marketing the 14-parcel assemblage for nearly a year, while CNS Real Estate represented Burlington in its lease negotiations, according to Commercial Observer's coverage cited by the developers.
Century Marketplace is only part of the larger unwinding of the old Century 21 complex. In October 2025, ASG Equities sold an adjacent portion of the former footprint — a 187,000-square-foot property at 423 88th Street with 124,000 square feet of multi-level parking — to the Abed family for $28 million, according to The Brooklyn Home Reporter. That 88th Street site includes six parking levels and 63,000 square feet of commercial space, separate from the 86th Street retail rebuild now underway.
Betting on Foot Traffic Returning
Before its Bay Ridge location closed in 2018, the Century 21 property drew more than four million annual visitor trips to the 86th Street corridor, according to MCB Real Estate. Foot traffic within 1,000 feet of the site has still reached 3.2 million visitors over the past year even with the property sitting vacant, and that traffic increased nearly 6 percent from the previous year, per the developers' figures reported by Brooklyn Paper. Average asking rents along the 86th Street corridor averaged $85 per square foot in 2025, according to a Brooklyn retail report by the Real Estate Board of New York cited by Commercial Observer, while vacancy along the strip has held around 5 percent, supported by strong neighborhood density and transit access at the nearby 86th Street R train station.
Century Marketplace sits a half-block from that subway stop, and Gordon said the project demonstrates the developers' ability to execute complex structuring while delivering high-quality retail to dense markets. Kayla Santosuosso, an area council member, said the development will bring new life to the vacant site and boost foot traffic supporting local small businesses. Once completed, the developers expect 86th Street to stand alongside other major New York City shopping corridors like Fulton Street, Fordham Road, Austin Street, and 125th Street.
Borough-Wide Context and What's Still Unknown
The Bay Ridge project lands amid a broader wave of retail investment in Brooklyn, which recorded $175.8 million in retail investment sales across five major property trades during the first seven months of 2025, driven largely by institutional demand for grocery-anchored centers, according to Commercial Property Executive. Grocery-anchored properties generated $7 billion in national transaction volume in 2024, the outlet noted, underscoring why developers are leaning on a grocery lease to anchor the rebuilt corridor.
As of now, a search of the New York City Department of Buildings database found no certificates of occupancy on file for the development, and the identity of the incoming national grocer remains undisclosed. Whether that grocer's name surfaces before the project's targeted 2028 opening — or how the remaining junior-anchor and high-street retail space gets filled — is still an open question for the corridor that once anchored Southwest Brooklyn shopping.
