Macy’s Closed at Livingston Mall While American Dream Opened a Concert Venue
- Alex Preziosi
- May 8
- 3 min read
If you grew up in Essex County, Morris County, or really anywhere in North Jersey, there is a good chance Livingston Mall holds some kind of memory for you.
Maybe it was walking around, going to Lord & Taylor with your mom after dinner just to get out of the house. Maybe it was hanging around with friends on a Friday night with nowhere specific to be, going into Spencer’s, Limited Too, PacSun (major throwbacks, I know). Maybe it was your first job, or getting your photo taken with Santa, or killing time between errands in a way that felt oddly comfortable.
After more than half a century, Livingston Mall is all but dead. The Livingston Township Council adopted a plan to redevelop the space for housing back in March 2025, and this past January, Macy’s announced it would be closing its location there by last week, April 30, 2026, as part of the company’s nationwide store reduction strategy. Barnes and Noble is relocating.
A shopping complex that was for decades a social and economic hub of the community, hosting an annual high school art show and offering teenagers their first jobs, is now a remnant of an era that has passed.
It is worth sitting with that for a second before we talk about what is next.
Malls were never really about shopping. They were about having somewhere to go. A climate controlled, low pressure place where you could exist in public without an agenda. That kind of space is actually harder to find than people realize, and losing it is a real loss even if we stopped going years ago.
But North Jersey is not exactly lacking for options right now, and the contrast could not be more striking. Twelve miles away in East Rutherford, American Dream just announced a brand new 3,000 seat performing arts center opening this spring. Eleven new restaurants and stores are coming in 2026. A Messi Experience. Soup dumplings. A Mediterranean restaurant from a celebrated Israeli chef. A global beauty flagship. Governor Sherrill liked it so much she held her January Inaugural Ball there.
The difference between these two places tells you everything about where retail and community space is heading. Livingston Mall was built around department stores as anchors. When those stores started dying, there was nothing left to hold the whole thing together. American Dream was built around the idea that people want an experience, not just a transaction. Love it or find it overwhelming, that bet appears to be working.
What Livingston is inching toward now is a more modern model, higher density housing paired with retail, community space and walkability. Apartments, ground floor shops, green space and a reason to visit that is not tied to whether Macy’s is having a sale. For the people who live in that area and care about what happens to that property, that is actually worth being optimistic about.
North Jersey does not stay still.
The places we grew up around change, sometimes faster than we would like. But the towns themselves, the communities, the reason people want to live here, that part does not go anywhere.
If you have questions about what is happening in the local market, I am always happy to talk.
AND CHECK OUT MY NEW LISTING IN LYNDHURST:
