Paramus has never had a Main Street. Not in the way Ridgewood or Westwood do, with a walkable strip of storefronts and a train station anchoring the middle of town. Paramus built its identity on the opposite idea: you drive in, you park, you shop, you drive home. For almost seventy years, Garden State Plaza has been the closest thing the town has to a center, and a mall by definition isn't a place you live near, it's a place you visit.
That's the part changing this year, and it's happening at the mall itself.
What Broke Ground in April
On April 29, 2026, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and its development partner Mill Creek Residential held a groundbreaking on the northwest corner of Garden State Plaza, near the Cliff Gennarelli-Paramus Sports-Plex. The first phase covers 13 acres and includes two five-story buildings under Mill Creek's Modera brand, totaling 575 market-rate apartments, plus nearly 50,000 square feet of new retail space and a one-acre town square park. The site is boxed in by Route 4 to the north, Garden State Plaza Parkway to the south, Garden State Plaza Boulevard to the east, and the Garden State Parkway to the west, according to reporting from New York YIMBY.
The plan calls for a main street-style outdoor district lined with restaurants and everyday services, plus EV charging infrastructure, with Jersey Digs describing it as a notable departure from the mall-and-parking-lot layout that has defined the property since it opened in 1957 as New Jersey's first suburban shopping mall. The first phase is targeted for completion by the end of 2027. Later phases under discussion include a hotel, medical offices, senior living, and upgrades to public transit access, though none of that is under construction yet.
None of this makes Paramus a walkable downtown overnight. Route 4 traffic doesn't disappear because a park gets built next to it. But it's worth sitting with what's actually different here: a mall that has spent seven decades organized entirely around parking capacity is now building housing and a public square inside its own footprint. That's not a tenant swap. That's a change in what the property is for.
The Restaurants Getting There First
If the apartments and the town square are the long game, the dining scene is the part residents will notice sooner, and it's already moving.
Blue Bottle Coffee is opening at Westfield Garden State Plaza this month, per the mall's own leasing page, with Edikted apparel following in September and a bakery, Liv Breads, slated for October. That's three new tenants inside three months at the same property that just broke ground on housing, which tells you the mall isn't waiting for the apartments to be finished before it starts acting like a different kind of destination.
Across town at Bergen Town Center, celebrity chef Josh Capon has been signaling the arrival of Capon's Burgers since last fall, when signage went up announcing what he's described as a no-frills burger joint. It's the second Capon's Burgers location after the original at Fontainebleau Las Vegas and Capon's first fast-casual concept in New Jersey, following his steakhouse debut at The Shops at Riverside in Hackensack. As of this writing the exact opening date hasn't been confirmed publicly, but the mall lineup and Capon's own social media posts point to it landing this year.
And on Route 4, a Raising Cane's is coming to the site of the former Stickley Furniture showroom at 55 Route 4 West, a 1.72-acre lot Stickley vacated after relocating to Route 17 North in fall 2024. NJBIZ reported on August 4, 2026 that the Paramus Planning Board approved the project in a 6-0 vote back in January, with plans to demolish the existing 22,364-square-foot building and replace it with a 3,390-square-foot restaurant featuring a drive-thru, outdoor dining, and 44 parking spaces.
Three unrelated openings, three different corners of town, all landing in the same year Garden State Plaza started building housing. That's not a coincidence you need real estate credentials to spot. It's what a retail corridor looks like when the operators inside it start betting on the town having more people who live near it, not just people who drive through it.
What Hasn't Needed Any of This
Van Saun County Park was already doing the thing the mall is now trying to build. It's been the actual gathering place in Paramus for generations, and it didn't need a groundbreaking ceremony to get there.
Spanning more than 130 acres at 216 Forest Avenue, Van Saun is home to the Bergen County Zoo, a carousel, the Safari Express miniature train, a splash pad, a dog park, and enough picnic ground to host a birthday party without a reservation. This August it's also one of the county's stops on the free Movies & Music in the Park series, run by the Bergen County Parks Department. The Van Saun lineup ran Superman on Wednesday, August 5, and The SpongeBob Movie: Search for the SquarePants on Friday, August 7, following earlier July screenings of Miracle, Sketch, Goat, and Tron: Ares. Eleven screenings in total are scheduled at Van Saun this summer, part of 25 film and concert events across four county parks.
There's a useful contrast here. Garden State Plaza is trying to manufacture a public square from scratch, with architects and a groundbreaking ceremony and a completion date two years out. Van Saun has been a public square for decades, free to enter, with zero marketing budget and a crowd that shows up anyway. The mall's redevelopment might eventually earn that same kind of unforced loyalty. It hasn't yet, because it can't. You don't get to skip the part where people just start showing up out of habit.
Why This Is Worth Watching Even If You're Not Moving
You don't need to be house hunting to care that the busiest commercial strip in your town is quietly rewriting what it's for. If you already live in Paramus, here's what's actually at stake between now and the first phase's targeted finish at the end of 2027:
More foot traffic near Route 4 and the Garden State Parkway interchange, concentrated around a corridor that was built for cars, not pedestrians. A new town square that will host the kind of seasonal programming, concerts, and festivals the developers have floated publicly, adding to what's already available at Van Saun rather than competing with it. And a genuine test of whether a retail-first town can grow a residential core without losing the thing that made it useful in the first place, which is that you can get almost anything you need within a five-minute drive.
None of that requires a transaction to matter to you. It changes your commute, your weekend options, and the character of the town you already call home. Whether it ends up being an improvement or a headache depends on execution the developers haven't delivered yet, and on how the borough handles the traffic and services questions that come with 575 new households in one spot.
If you're the kind of resident who likes knowing what's actually happening before it shows up as a headline, that's the update: the mall is becoming something other than a mall, three new restaurants are betting on that bet, and the park that never needed rebuilding is still the most reliable place in town to spend a Friday night for free.
If you ever want to talk through what any of this means for your own street, your own home's value, or your own timeline, whether that's now or a few years down the road, CrystalsCity is always a phone call away. Schedule a consultation or request a free home valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
