Barnes & Noble spent nearly 20 years inside Livingston Mall. On July 15, it closed those doors for good. Three weeks later, on August 7, it reopened less than two miles away at Livingston Shopping Center, in the space that used to be buybuy Baby. The move took about seven months from signed lease to grand opening.

The mall it left behind has been trying to figure out its own future since October 2024, when the Township Council designated the entire 43-acre property an "Area in Need of Redevelopment with Condemnation." Nearly two years later, there's still no finished plan for what replaces it.

That gap, seven months versus two years and counting, is the actual story here. It's not that Livingston stopped shopping. It's that the town's retail decisions have split between two very different kinds of ownership, and one kind moves at the speed of a lease signature while the other moves at the speed of a committee.

What closed, and what that leaves standing

Macy's shut its Livingston Mall store in April 2026, part of a round of 14 store closures the company announced in January 2026. Barnes & Noble followed in July. Between the two of them, the mall lost its last two national anchors in the space of four months, on top of Sears leaving years earlier and Lord & Taylor before that.

What's left at 112 Eisenhower Parkway right now is mostly smaller-format tenants and a lot of quiet hallway. The mall opened in 1972 with Bamberger's as its first anchor, and for most of its 50 years it was the default answer to "where do I go for this." That answer has moved.

The bookstore that got a new address faster than the mall got a plan

Barnes & Noble's relocation is worth walking through in detail because the mechanics explain why it happened so fast. In January 2026, the company signed a lease for roughly 25,000 square feet at Livingston Shopping Center, a Route 10 property owned outright by Kite Realty. One landlord, one decision, one signature. The store closed at the mall in mid-July and opened at its new address three weeks later. Barnes & Noble had originally scheduled bestselling author Harlan Coben to host a ribbon-cutting for the grand opening. That event and the date itself shifted at the last minute, with the store settling on an August 7 opening and Coben's appearance dropped from the program, a small detail that shows how compressed and last-minute even a straightforward relocation can get when a landlord is ready to move.

Livingston Shopping Center's other tenants tell the same story: Nordstrom Rack, Ulta Beauty, World Market, DSW, and T.J. Maxx are all in place. None of that required a redevelopment hearing.

Why the mall can't just do the same thing

Livingston Mall can't replicate that speed because it doesn't have one owner making one call. Kohan Retail Investment Group bought the property from Simon Property Group in July 2022, but Macy's held an option on roughly 10 acres in the mall's south section, Sears' interest passed to Transformco after its bankruptcy, and the company that inherited the old Lord & Taylor space controls a 50-year ground lease on another chunk of the site. Township Manager Barry Lewis Jr. described the coordination problem plainly at a council meeting, noting that the property is privately owned by multiple stakeholders, which makes any unified decision far more complicated than it would be with a single landlord.

Kohan's own finances haven't helped. A September 2025 review found the company was overdue on nearly $4 million in property taxes on the Livingston site alone, part of $8.7 million owed across its mall portfolio nationally. Lewis was blunt about the ownership change when asked about it directly:

"There hasn't been one positive thing about the entire experience since Kohan took over in 2022."

A landlord behind on taxes and negotiating with three other stakeholders over a single parcel is not going to out-execute a REIT that owns its Route 10 property free and clear.

Three properties, three timelines

Where the errands actually went

While Eisenhower Parkway sorts out its next act, two other parts of town have been quietly absorbing the demand. Azarian Realty leased a first-floor space at Livingston Town Center to Dupï Studio, a Korean scalp-treatment spa founded by a licensed esthetician, which opened in May 2026. Stretch Zone signed on at the same complex around the same time.

A few blocks over, the South Livingston Avenue corridor tracked by the InTown Livingston business district has kept adding names without any of the drama: Alloy Personal Training, Sugar Tree Café, Trendset Boutique, Nana's Bistro, and Blu Ale are all currently operating along that stretch. None of it made headlines the way the mall's anchor closures did, because none of it needed a redevelopment hearing to happen.

What's actually planned for the 43 acres

The mall site isn't frozen. In March 2025, the council approved a plan permitting 376 housing units, one-fifth of them affordable, on the former Sears parcel specifically, in exchange for the township not being required to allow housing across the rest of the 43 acres. That same month, the township ran a multi-day community visioning process, inviting residents to a kickoff workshop and a series of open design studios to weigh in on what should replace the enclosed mall format. The process produced an aerial rendering of possible future uses, but no finalized site plan for the property beyond the Sears parcel has been adopted as of this writing.

For a town used to seeing changes at the Route 10 shopping centers happen within months, the mall's pace has taken some getting used to. Whatever eventually rises on Eisenhower Parkway will likely mix housing with some open-air retail, similar to what a few other aging New Jersey malls have already begun doing. But that outcome is still working its way through a review process, while just under two miles away, a bookstore already has its shelves stocked.

The pattern worth knowing

If you're trying to figure out where to run tonight's errands, the answer is simple: Route 10 and South Livingston Avenue have absorbed what the mall used to handle, and they'll likely keep absorbing more of it as the mall's redevelopment plan works through hearings and stakeholder negotiations. If you're trying to understand why one property in town seems stuck while everything around it moves fast, the answer isn't e-commerce or changing habits. It's who owns the building, and how many other names are on the lease.

Understanding how a town's commercial geography shifts, and why, is part of what it means to actually know a place rather than just live near it. The Stephanie Mallios Team has spent years tracking exactly this kind of change across Millburn, Short Hills, and the surrounding towns Livingston sits among. If you're curious how any of this reshuffling touches your own corner of town, or just want to talk through what's happening down the street, reach out to schedule a personal market consultation.