Two names Long Islanders grew up with are about to share one address. The Fortunoff Backyard Store is planning a 26,000 square foot showroom at 385 Old Country Road in Carle Place, the building that housed Sam Ash Music until the chain closed, and the company expects to open it in early 2027.

The new showroom replaces the Fortunoff Backyard Store's longtime Westbury location at 1500 Old Country Road, about a mile and a half east. The company confirmed the move this week, with its general manager noting that Fortunoff has been part of the Westbury community for more than 50 years and framing the Carle Place building as its new home.

A name that never really left Old Country Road

For generations of Long Island families, Fortunoff was not a store so much as a destination. Max and Clara Fortunoff opened their first housewares shop in Brooklyn in 1922, and in 1964 the family planted its flag on Old Country Road in Westbury with the superstore that became one of the Island's defining retail landmarks. The Source mall that later rose around the site took its name from the store's famous tagline.

The jewelry and department store empire did not survive the 2008 downturn, and the bankruptcy that followed closed a chapter many Long Islanders still talk about. But one branch of the business kept going. The Backyard Store, a concept the company launched in 2001 to sell outdoor furniture, relaunched in 2010 and has been growing ever since, with the family name over the door and its Westbury showroom still sitting on the same stretch of Old Country Road where the superstore once stood.

That is what makes this move different from a retailer simply swapping addresses. The Backyard Store is not leaving. It is moving one village west on the same road, into a bigger building, and the Fortunoff name stays within sight of the corridor it helped define for six decades.

The building it is taking over has its own history

Sam Ash Music was a Long Island institution in its own right. The family-run chain, founded in Brooklyn in 1924 and headquartered in Hicksville, grew into the country's largest family-owned music retailer before announcing in May 2024 that it would close all of its stores nationwide. The Carle Place location at 385 Old Country Road was the last Sam Ash standing on Long Island, and its windows have been dark since the chain wound down that summer.

Now the building gets a second act. In place of guitars and drum kits, the 26,000 square feet will hold patio seating, dining sets, sectionals, umbrellas, outdoor bars and weather resistant storage, the full outdoor living catalog the Backyard Store is known for.

A year of growing on Long Island

The Carle Place project caps a year of expansion for the brand. In 2026 the company opened new showrooms in Huntington, on Old Walt Whitman Road, and in Stony Brook on Nesconset Highway, and it also operates a Riverhead location on Old Country Road there. The chain now counts roughly 30 showrooms across six states, from Connecticut to Virginia, but Long Island remains its home turf, with a half dozen showrooms between Westbury and Riverhead.

The company has not said exactly when the Westbury showroom will ring up its last sale, so shoppers who know the old space have time. The move is planned for early 2027, and until then it is business as usual at 1500 Old Country Road.

What it means for the corridor

Old Country Road between Westbury and Carle Place has been one of Long Island's busiest retail strips for half a century, and lately it has been churning: big boxes closing, new names moving in, familiar buildings finding new tenants. A 26,000 square foot commitment from a brand with Fortunoff's local history is a bet that the corridor's best days are not behind it.

For readers, the practical version is simpler. The store where your parents bought their patio set, and maybe where you bought yours, is not going anywhere. It is getting a bigger, newer home a few minutes down the road, and a building that has sat quiet since the last chord faded at Sam Ash will have its lights on again by spring 2027.