Hylan Commons Filled Back Up With Food, Fitness and a Pet ER. Magnolia Bakery Is the Latest.

Magnolia Bakery scheduled the ribbon cutting for its first Staten Island shop for Tuesday, Nov. 3, at 10 a.m. The shop is in Hylan Commons, at the corner of Hylan Boulevard and New Dorp Lane, between Aldi and Planet Fitness. It's the newest name at a corner that has been almost completely re-tenanted in about two years.

Every business that has opened at Hylan Commons since 2025 sells something you eat, a workout, groceries or emergency care for a pet. Nobody new is selling clothes. The center's last apparel store, T.J. Maxx, moved out in May 2026. Today the corner runs on meals and errands, and the biggest open question is a former clothing store that's now empty.

What the corner used to sell

The list of past tenants explains the change. SILive reported in October 2024 that the center had once housed Annie Sez, New York & Company, Justice, Boston Market, Carter's, Applebee's and Five Below. Five Below had moved to The Boulevard in 2023.

That same October 2024 report counted six vacant stores, plus one more filled only temporarily by Spirit Halloween. A large strip of the center had been empty for at least four years. It had been held for a "supermarket anchor" since 2021, after earlier signs that Amazon Fresh would take it. The landlord's leasing material from then named the plan as Shake Shack in the former Five Below, Pho Today two doors down, and Veterinary Emergency Group in the freestanding building where Municipal Credit Union used to be. A Shake Shack representative told SILive at the time that no lease had been signed.

Two years of openings, in order

Every part of that plan has since come true, and it filled in with the same kind of tenant each time:

1. Aldi, June 2025. The discount grocer scheduled a soft opening for June 25 and an official ribbon cutting on June 26. It took part of the old supermarket-anchor space but not all of it.
2. Pho Today, summer 2025. SILive reported in August that the Vietnamese restaurant had opened earlier that summer.
3. Wonder, Aug. 14, 2025. The food hall, where one order can come from 12 restaurants including a Bobby Flay steakhouse, set its public opening for that date.
4. Shake Shack, Oct. 31, 2025. The burger chain opened at 10:30 a.m. on Halloween, so it has now been open just over a year. It was the chain's third Staten Island restaurant.
5. Planet Fitness, late 2025. Its third Staten Island club, at 430 New Dorp Lane right next to Aldi, was offering pre-opening deals in October 2025, according to SILive.
6. Makoto, holiday season 2025. A conveyor-belt sushi restaurant opened at 2530 Hylan Blvd.
7. VEG ER for Pets, by September 2026. Veterinary Emergency Group's 24/7 walk-in hospital opened as the chain's first Staten Island location.
8. Magnolia Bakery, with its ribbon cutting scheduled for Nov. 3, 2026.

A Starbucks is also listed among the center's tenants, so the bakery will share the plaza with a coffee shop.

Taken together, that's seven openings in roughly 15 months, a grocer, four places to eat, a gym and an animal hospital, with a bakery scheduled as the eighth. All of them depend on people showing up in person. Even Wonder, a brand built around ordering, gives the center a counter where people walk in.

Why a bakery fits the pattern

Magnolia is a well-known Manhattan name, but its arrival here is a local story. The owner is Ereny Ghobrial, a Staten Islander and Magnolia Bakery's first franchise owner in New York. "So many members of our community already know and love Magnolia Bakery, and we're excited to bring it a little closer to home," Ghobrial told SILive.

The brand opened its first shop in the West Village in 1996, and that shop is still at Bleecker and West 11th streets. It's known for its banana pudding and red velvet cupcakes. SILive counted 11 New York locations before this one: 10 in Manhattan and one at LaGuardia Airport. That makes New Dorp its first New York shop outside Manhattan and the airport. SILive also called it the brand's first traditional storefront in the borough.

The space itself matters too. In the landlord's leasing material, the one available unit, about 2,400 square feet, is numbered between Aldi and Planet Fitness. That's where Magnolia is going, so the bakery is slated for the last listed gap in a row of small shops that had six vacancies in 2024.

The tenant that left

The one departure in this period is the clearest sign of the shift. SILive reported that the T.J. Maxx at 2530 Hylan Blvd. would close by late May 2026. It moved to 283 Platinum Ave. in New Springville, into the freestanding Staten Island Mall building that used to be the Container Store. The new store is about 24,075 square feet. The landlord's leasing sheet had listed the Hylan store at 21,000 square feet.

So in two years, the center's food, grocery and fitness tenants grew while its clothing anchor moved closer to the mall. This fall, Spirit Halloween was slated to use the former T.J. Maxx space as a seasonal pop-up. The landlord, Treeco, now markets Hylan Commons with an "anchor opportunity" on its property page.

Whatever fills that space will be the largest new tenant at the corner since Aldi. Aldi is 24,000 square feet, about the same size as the old T.J. Maxx.

Using the corner now

The center has 313 parking spaces, according to Treeco's leasing sheet. The main address is 2530 Hylan Blvd. Planet Fitness uses 430 New Dorp Lane, and VEG uses 2546 Hylan Blvd.

VEG ER works differently from a regular vet visit. According to the company's press release quoted by SILive, people who call reach a licensed veterinarian right away. Triage starts as soon as you walk in, before any paperwork, and owners can stay with their pets through treatment, including surgery and overnight stays. The medical director, Dr. Mark Fealey, was born and raised on Staten Island. The chain runs more than 140 hospitals in the U.S. and Canada, and this is its tenth in New York.

The next openings are on the Lane and Hylan

The same mix of food and errands is spreading past the center's lot. Restaurateur Tim Gashi and his cousin are building Paros Estiatorio, a 6,000-square-foot Greek seafood restaurant on New Dorp Lane. They're aiming for December, depending on liquor license approval. According to SILive, the plans include a chef from Greece, five whole fish on display every weekend for guests to pick from, live music and a weekend brunch priced at $40 to $50. The owners are keeping the exact address private until they're ready. "We don't want people showing up thinking we're open," Gashi told SILive.

Down Hylan Boulevard, Asad's Hot Chicken is planned for the former Popeyes at 2506 Hylan Blvd. That puts one more restaurant on the stretch of Hylan near the corner where a clothing store used to be the anchor.

If you've watched this corner fill in and wondered what it means for your own block, or what the former T.J. Maxx space could do for nearby homes, GAMA Team follows New Dorp storefront by storefront and is happy to talk it through. Get Started Today.