Vacant Spaces: Old Stop and Shop Sitting Empty For Now; Business Down in Complex

There's one benefit to the vacancy of in Tarrytown's Bridge Plaza: more parking.

On a sunny late afternoon, the parking lot is half-empty. The store itself, vacated at the end of March when the opened further down Route 119, has just been emptied of all the shelving and traces of what it once was.

"They are finally working on getting rid of Stop and Shop's mess," owner Franco Dattillo said. 

There's as of yet no sign of the CVS to come, but look out for work beginning soon. The company's Director of PR, Mike DeAngelis, said renovation is scheduled to start in early June with a store opening planned for late October.

Local store owners say they are eager, not for CVS exactly, but anything. October seems a long way off. One thing you don't want when you rent near an anchor store is no anchor.

Michael Sarran, an employee of the , said business is a little slower now during the day, though, yes, he did note there was more parking.

“Everybody is hurting here,” said Matthew Namkung, owner of the . What would he like to see in the vacant anchor building? “Whatever. I just don't like it empty.”

Namkung also spoke of the senior citizens, who form a sizable population of the many of the surrounding condominium complexes and relied on this store for their groceries. “They need it, they don't have cars,” he said.

Capri's Dattilo also attested that business is “a little bit slower.” He estimated it was down 10 percent since the grocery shut down. “Walk-ins went down a little bit,” he said.

Though Dattilo said the old Stop and Shop was “the worst ever," he still doesn't like to see it gone. He too voted for “anything” and didn't particularly have any opinion on the coming CVS and the supposed small fresh food market to the side (this was news to him). “As long as they don't have pizza, we're good.”