Burlington Plans Record 110 Store Openings, Including Flagship Manhattan Location

Burlington CEO Michael O'Sullivan laid out an aggressive expansion blueprint this week, confirming the company will open a record 110 new stores in 2026, with the most closely watched debut scheduled for April 3: an 80,000-square-foot, two-level flagship at 620 Sixth Avenue in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood.

The location sits inside the historic Siegel-Cooper Building, the Beaux Arts landmark that spans the entire block between 18th and 19th Streets and was, when it opened in 1897, the largest department store in the world. Burlington's arrival makes it the third off-price anchor in the building, joining TJ Maxx and Marshalls. O'Sullivan has called that co-tenancy an advantage rather than a liability. "We've been growing not at the expense of each other," he said. "Off-price, as a retail segment, has been taking share from non-off-price." The Siegel-Cooper store will be Burlington's fifth Manhattan location and its 74th in New York state.

The move to 620 Sixth is also a relocation. Burlington's previous Chelsea store, at Sixth Avenue and 23rd Street, was, in the words of commercial broker Cliff Simon, "inefficient from a retailing standpoint." The new space, secured through a 12-year lease with building co-owners RXR and Hudson Bay Capital, nearly doubles Burlington's footprint in the Sixth Avenue corridor. It will also feature the brand's redesigned store format: open layout, organized aisles, bold signage and a custom interior design drawn from classic New York City iconography.

That reimagined format is already rolling out across Burlington's fleet of more than 1,100 existing locations, with half already converted and most remaining stores on track for completion by year-end. All 110 new 2026 openings will carry the updated layout from day one, a deliberate break from the dense, high-rack environments that long defined off-price retail.

The record store count was made possible, in significant part, by a wave of retail bankruptcies. More than 40 percent of this year's new Burlington locations will occupy spaces vacated by Joann Fabrics, which shuttered entirely in 2025. Burlington secured 45 of those leases, continuing a strategy that also produced 50 Bed Bath & Beyond acquisitions in 2023. O'Sullivan said the 110-store figure "reflects the strength of our new store pipeline and the performance we are seeing from new stores."

Backing the push logistically is a 2-million-square-foot distribution center in Savannah, Georgia, set to open imminently. By December, Burlington expects to operate approximately 1,320 stores total, up from 1,211 at the close of 2025.

The Siegel-Cooper Building's original tenant opened as the largest store on earth. Burlington, arriving 129 years later with a redesigned footprint and a pipeline built largely on other retailers' failures, seems comfortable with the symbolism.