National grocery chain Trader Joe's will construct a 921,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution center on New York's Long Island, in the hamlet of Islandia. Based on staffing at the chain’s other large distribution centers, the new hub could create as many as 800 jobs, reports Long Island Business News. The 66-acre site was formerly the home of CA Technologies.
The development plan includes a 756,032-square-foot warehouse with a portion dedicated to cold storage, a freezer storage building of 125,433 square feet with an option to expand to 159,000 square feet, and a 6,261-square-foot maintenance building, according to a report from the Suffolk County Planning Commission.
Currently, there are at least 13 Trader Joe’s stores that the new Islandia distribution hub would service, including seven on Long Island, three in Brooklyn and three in Queens, reports LIBN. But the development of the Long Island distribution facility also opens the door for the chain to expand its area retail footprint. Today, the nearest Trader Joe’s distribution center is a 530,000-square-foot facility in Bath, Pa., which is about 120 miles away from the chain’s Garden City store, taking trucks at least three hours to travel each way.
The proposed Trader Joe’s distribution hub in Islandia would not be the company’s largest. The grocery chain just completed a new warehouse and distribution center on 104 acres in Palmdale, Calif. that exceeds 1 million square feet and is expected to employ nearly 1,000 people. That development followed a 1 million-square-foot complex in Franklin, Ky. that opened last year and was slated to employ 800.
At the end of 2024, Trader Joe’s had 593 stores throughout 43 states and Washington D.C.