When a restaurant closes on Forest Avenue, how long does its storefront stay dark? In 2026 it ranged from a few weeks to a few months, and every food space that closed already had a named food tenant lined up. Often the next tenant cooks something close to what the last one cooked.
A wing shop became a wing shop. A Popeyes became a fried chicken spot. A smashburger counter is set to become a gyro shop, and a Middle Eastern restaurant is being rebuilt as a halal grill. The biggest vacancy on the corridor was a former Party City, a party supply store rather than a restaurant, and it sat empty for more than a year and a half. On this stretch of the North Shore, restaurant space finds restaurant tenants faster than a retail box finds anyone.
What a fryer is worth to the next tenant
SILive laid out the mechanism in an October 19 look at the borough's chicken boom. Once a space has commercial fryers, ventilation systems and fire suppression, it "can offer a head start for the next chicken entrepreneur." The same piece described the category as attractive to operators because it calls for fairly simple equipment, lean staffing and a smaller investment than many full-service concepts.
The scale of the category matters too. Citing city health department licensing records, SILive counted 20 dedicated chicken restaurants, chains and wing concepts on Staten Island as of 2026, with at least two more on the way. Wing World co-owner Deanna Raiolo described the competition to the Staten Island Advance in May: "Everybody is fighting for the same dollar."
With that many operators competing, a space that has already housed a restaurant on a busy avenue has a ready pool of tenants. Forest Avenue's 2026 record fits that pattern.
The swaps, address by address
Going west to east by street number, here is what changed hands this year:
- 474 Forest Ave., West Brighton. Planet Wings closed its last Staten Island locations this spring, and by June Saucy Wingz had taken the Forest Avenue space, according to SILive's October roundup of 2026 closings.
- 646 Forest Ave., West Brighton. Supreme Burger closed after a two-year run, and Gyro City is named as the next tenant.
- 1198B Forest Ave., Westerleigh. Sumac closed after 10 years. Tacojees, a halal grill, is being built in the space, SILive reported in September.
- 1210 Forest Ave., Westerleigh. The second Sofia's Guac Bar closed, and Favorite Son opened there on Sept. 9.
- 1267 Forest Ave., Port Richmond. Tacobees, a halal Mexican fast-casual spot, moved into the former Japanese Quick Grill, per SILive's January report.
- 1351 Forest Ave., Port Richmond. The Popeyes here has been shut since March 9. The October roundup said it was set to become the second Staten Island location of Tex's Chicken & Burgers. By Oct. 19, SILive was reporting that Tex's had arrived, bringing ultra-crunchy halal fried chicken and late-night hours.
- 1545 Forest Ave. Lidl opened its second Staten Island store on Sept. 30 in the shopping center space Party City left behind.
Six of the seven are food-service spaces. In four of them the new tenant stays in the old one's lane: wings to wings, fried chicken to fried chicken, burgers to gyros, Middle Eastern to a halal grill. The other two switched cuisines and stayed food, with a quick-service Japanese grill becoming a taco counter and a guac bar becoming a pizzeria. The seventh address took far longer to fill.
Saucy Wingz followed the build-outs
The Saucy Wingz owners did more than take one leftover space. Sal Sabbe and Sam Aziz, childhood friends from Brooklyn who moved to Staten Island when they were young, opened their first Saucy Wingz in mid-March at 698 Arthur Kill Rd. in Greenridge, also in a former Planet Wings space, the Advance reported in May. When the story ran, their second location at 474 Forest Ave. was under construction.
The partners bring more than 28 years of combined food-industry experience. Aziz started at a McDonald's at 14, and Sabbe started at 15 grilling cheesesteaks. "Sal's an expert on the grill. I'm an expert on chicken," Aziz told the Advance. The shop offers 18 flavor options.
Both Saucy Wingz storefronts had been wing shops before the partners moved in, and they went from one location to two within a few months.
Favorite Son changed the menu, not the use
Favorite Son replaced a guac bar with naturally fermented sourdough pizza and a short wine list. Owner Danny Ippolito, who has worked at Carbone and Locanda Verde and previously owned Bin 5 on Staten Island, works the galley kitchen alone. SILive's September profile called the space "efficient, almost claustrophobic."
The concept works because it asks very little of the room. There are no slices, no delivery and no reservations. Pies come out on paper plates, and dinner runs from 5 to 10 p.m., six days a week. The Advance reported that peak hours could bring a line out the door. A one-person dinner-only pizzeria gives a small former restaurant space a food tenant even when the cuisine changes completely.
The party supply box waited more than a year and a half
Party City's Forest Avenue closing was announced in November 2024, SILive reported at the time, with an employee expecting the store to stay open until mid-January. SILive's later coverage describes it as having shuttered in 2024. Either way, Lidl did not open there until Sept. 30, 2026, more than a year and a half later. Lidl planned a 7:40 a.m. ribbon-cutting for opening day and set regular hours of 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Its neighbors in the shopping center include PetSmart and TJ Maxx.
Compare that with Planet Wings, which went dark in the spring and reopened as Saucy Wingz by June. Even the slowest food swap on the list, the Popeyes at 1351 that closed March 9 and had become Tex's by Oct. 19, turned over in about seven months. Lidl's only other borough store is at 283 Platinum Ave. in New Springville, near the Staten Island Mall. That store opened in December 2018 and was the chain's first in New York City. The chain's second borough store came nearly eight years after its first.
What's still coming on the strip
As of late October, two of the swaps are still in progress:
- Gyro City at 646 Forest Ave. The space is named as Supreme Burger's successor. No opening date has been announced.
- Tacojees at 1198B Forest Ave. In September, SILive reported crews working late into the evening. The Advance also noted that Tacojees is a separate business from Tacobees, despite the similar name.
Some of the avenue's long-running chicken spots are holding steady. On a recent Tuesday around 7 p.m., SILive found House of Wings on Forest Avenue with a full dining room while traffic thinned outside. At Sally's Southern in West Brighton, owner Peter Botros has built his following on gourmet fried chicken. "You can do fried chicken incorrectly very quickly," he told the Advance. "But if you want to do it well, it's a multi-step process." The Crumbl Cookies on Forest Avenue is still open, even after the chain closed its South Shore Commons store in Charleston this year.
When Tex's, Gyro City and Tacojees are all open, every food space that closed on this stretch in 2026 will have a cooking tenant again. The Party City box is the only one that had to wait for a grocer.
If you own a Forest Avenue storefront, the build-out is part of what you're leasing, and the space's past use shapes who calls when it comes back on the market. Asset CRG values North Shore retail buildings on how their spaces actually re-lease, including how long a large retail box takes to fill compared with a former restaurant. Request a property valuation and off-market access to see where your building fits.
