Who Is Taking Over East 86th Street's Biggest Empty Storefronts, and When They Open

"This lease transforms a long-vacant former movie theatre space," Christian B. Stanton of Avison Young said in a statement reported by Patch in September, describing the planned grocery as a wellness-focused destination. He was describing 210 East 86th Street, where the City Cinemas theater closed in May 2019 and the space has stayed dark since.

That lease is one of several that put the Upper East Side at the top of Manhattan's retail leasing count for the third quarter of 2026. East Side Feed reported that CBRE counted 15 Upper East Side leases totaling nearly 97,000 square feet that quarter, more than any other Manhattan neighborhood by both deal count and square footage, with much of the activity on 86th Street and Second Avenue.

The deals are signed, but the stores are still a long way off. The largest spaces have opening windows in late 2027 or no date at all. For the next year, the new places on this stretch of the Upper East Side are mostly small shops on the side streets.

Three big vacancies, three different waits

The largest deals all fill spaces that a previous tenant left. Each has been empty for a different length of time:

1. 210 East 86th Street, between Second and Third avenues. The City Cinemas theater closed in May 2019 and the 20,500-square-foot space has been vacant since. Happier Grocery has leased it and expects to open in the second half of 2027.
2. 1524 Second Avenue, at East 79th Street. This was a Duane Reade, which announced a November 12 closing in fall 2024. Whole Foods has leased the corner.
3. 150 East 86th Street, between Lexington and Third avenues. H&M opened here in May 2008 and was scheduled to close for good on January 19, 2026. T.J. Maxx has signed for the space.

The theater sat empty for more than seven years and the drugstore for about two. The H&M space found a tenant within months of closing. Even so, all three stores are aiming for roughly the same time frame, and that is not soon.

Why a grocer and a discount store took the big floors

The two largest spaces went to a grocer and an off-price department store. The reason starts with what is on offer across Manhattan. In its third-quarter 2026 report, CBRE said ground-floor availability on the borough's 16 prime retail corridors fell 11 percent to 151 spaces. It also said demand from food-and-beverage and apparel tenants was strong, and that rising costs were steering tenants toward turnkey spaces, which are getting harder to find. Average asking rent on those prime corridors was $707 per square foot, up 5 percent from a year earlier.

That puts a 20,000-square-foot former theater in a strange spot. Very few tenants can use that much floor area, and the space is the opposite of turnkey. A grocer is one of the few uses large enough to fill it. The brokers on these deals pointed to the area's large residential population: Avison Young described Happier as a good match for the corridor's residential base and its established food retailers. Newmark told Commercial Observer that the Whole Foods corner's visibility and the density of the surrounding blocks suited a neighborhood-scale store.

T.J. Maxx is splitting its 28,837 square feet over two levels, with about 4,000 square feet on the ground floor and about 25,000 on the second. A two-story layout like that works for a store people visit on purpose. Commercial Observer reported the deal, and according to East Side Feed's account of the CBRE report, it was the largest retail lease signed anywhere in Manhattan in the third quarter. It narrowly beat Crunch Fitness's 28,100-square-foot lease at 2192 Broadway on the Upper West Side. Once open, it will share the block with Target, Old Navy, Foot Locker, Victoria's Secret and Ulta Beauty.

Rent figures for this stretch are less precise than the headlines suggest. CBRE's third-quarter asking rent for its Upper East Side corridor was $259 per square foot, but that corridor is Third Avenue from 60th to 72nd Street, not 86th Street. The Whole Foods space was reportedly asking $250 per square foot.

What each lease will actually bring

Happier Grocery will be the company's second New York City store. The first opened at 365 Canal Street in SoHo in 2023. Avison Young describes it as a wellness-focused neighborhood market selling fresh foods, prepared meals and specialty products. The Real Deal reports that brothers Dawson and Wells Stellberger run it under Happier People Management, a hospitality management and staffing company they founded in 2020. No exact opening date has been announced.

The Whole Foods at 79th and Second will not be a full supermarket. Reports put its size at between roughly 8,100 and 9,100 square feet. Commercial Observer said it would likely be a Daily Shop, the chain's convenience-oriented format built around prepared food. Whole Foods has not confirmed that. The neighborhood already has one Daily Shop, at 1175 Third Avenue, which opened in September 2024 and sells grab-and-go meals, snacks, essentials and cooking ingredients. A local roundup from September 2026 reported construction underway at the Second Avenue site.

Not every deal in CBRE's count adds a new store. One of the named Upper East Side transactions was CityMD renewing its 4,500-square-foot lease at 1152 Third Avenue.

Meanwhile, the side streets filled in

While the big spaces wait for 2027, the openings people can actually visit this fall are small ones, mostly on the side streets around 86th. Each one fits in a single storefront:

• Kuriya, 219 East 85th Street, between Second and Third avenues, opened Sunday, September 6, according to Eater.
• Opening Move Café, a board-game café at 208 East 87th Street, between Second and Third avenues, was reported open as of October 18.
• Human Head Records, 455 East 83rd Street, between First and York avenues, opened August 1. East Side Feed reported it as open daily.
• The Formula x Meredith, 310 East 86th Street, opened its first New York City studio on June 10.

This is the other side of the pattern CBRE described. Small, ready-to-use storefronts move quickly and suit independent operators who can open in weeks. The 20,000-square-foot spaces need a tenant that can absorb a long buildout, and the opening dates reflect that.

What to expect over the next few weeks

On Second Avenue, the next openings are in the same small-storefront category. The Yorkville Ledger's openings tracker, last updated October 12, lists these:

• Bread Ahead, 1571 Second Avenue at East 82nd Street, is due to open in November, with no exact date posted.
• Pepe & Vera, 1712 First Avenue, between East 88th and 89th streets, is aiming for Thanksgiving week, though Patch reported that the owners called the timing tentative.
• Bluestone Lane, in the former Adria space at 1556 Second Avenue, between East 80th and 81st streets, is still listed as coming soon with no date. Adria served its last customers there on September 12.
• MYKA, a frozen yogurt shop at 1547 Second Avenue near East 80th Street, is also listed as coming soon with no date.

A few blocks east, the East River Esplanade has its own temporary closures. On October 15, Patch reported that repairs to a sinkhole at East 80th Street had closed the pedestrian entrances at East 78th and 81st streets. This sinkhole is less than a block from one at East 79th Street that was repaired over the summer, when the same two entrances were closed. The Parks Department expected the work to take about two weeks, so the bridges may reopen around the time this post is published. Posted signs will show whether they are open.

On 86th Street itself, the former theater and the former H&M will keep their current look for most of the coming year: a grocer and a discount store that have signed leases but are still months from opening.

Changes to the retail on a block can affect how buyers see a building's location. If you own on or near 86th Street and want to know how 2027's openings might bear on your plans, Anna Coatsworth can go through the timeline with you. Request a Confidential Market Consultation.