Drive down Route 35 South past 180 Route 35 this month and you'll see it: a lit-up Whole Foods sign, a full parking lot, and beyond it, fencing still wrapped around a construction zone where a public green and a wine bar are supposed to go. That's Eatontown in September 2026. One part of the old Monmouth Mall property has genuinely turned into something new. Almost everything else people are talking about is still a press release with a ribbon-cutting date attached to it, not a door you can walk through.
The headlines from the past year make it sound like Monmouth Square is stacking up name after name: Felice, Prince Street Pizza, Cava, Van Leeuwen, STRONG Pilates, Offshore Coffee, Arhaus. Read enough of that coverage and you'd assume the site is turning into a bigger, busier version of the mall Eatontown grew up with. It isn't. Kushner Companies, the developer behind the $500 million-plus redevelopment, has said publicly that the retail footprint is shrinking by roughly 40 percent from what the enclosed mall used to hold. The space that disappears isn't going to more shopping. It's going to housing.
The One Store You Can Actually Walk Into
Whole Foods Market opened at 180 Route 35 South on July 29, becoming the first genuinely new tenant to open its doors at the property since the redevelopment began. The 40,000-square-foot store occupies the space that used to be Barnes & Noble, and it leans hard into a Jersey Shore identity: a bright, sea-inspired color palette, raw wood accents, and more than 1,000 local products sourced from the Northeast. Opening day included coffee samples from Paper Plane Coffee Co. and pastries from Palazzone 1960, an Italian bakery out of Wayne, plus a promotion that gave the first 300 shoppers in line a limited-edition Eatontown tote bag and a coupon worth up to $100 off.
That's the entire list of what's new and operating at Monmouth Square right now. One grocery store. Everything else with a familiar-sounding name attached to it is still on paper.
Everything Else Is A Signed Lease, Not An Open Door
The confusion is understandable, because Kushner has announced tenants in waves, and each announcement reads like an opening. It isn't. Here's where things actually stand as of this writing, based on the most recent reporting available:
| Tenant | Type | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Felice | Tuscan restaurant and wine bar (SA Hospitality Group) | Signed lease, targeting fourth quarter 2026 |
| Prince Street Pizza | New York-style pizza | Signed lease, no public opening date |
| Cava | Mediterranean fast-casual | Signed lease, no public opening date |
| Van Leeuwen Ice Cream | Artisan ice cream | Signed lease, no public opening date |
| STRONG Pilates | Boutique fitness studio | Signed lease, no public opening date |
| Offshore Coffee Co. | Local coffee brand | Signed lease, no public opening date |
| Arhaus | Home furnishings | Signed lease, no public opening date |
Felice is the one worth watching most closely. It's SA Hospitality Group's first New Jersey location and its first flagship outside New York City and Florida, a 4,500-square-foot restaurant and wine bar planned for the center of Monmouth Square's public green. The company confirmed a fourth-quarter 2026 target when the lease was announced in October 2025. Nothing else on that list has a stated opening date attached to it, which means anyone budgeting a weekend around a Prince Street Pizza slice or a Van Leeuwen scoop in Eatontown is planning around a rumor, not a schedule.
What Never Left
The part of this story that gets buried under all the new-tenant news is that almost nothing about the mall Eatontown residents already knew has actually changed. Macy's, Boscov's, and the AMC Monmouth 15 movie theater have continued operating straight through the demolition and construction. Barnes & Noble didn't close, it moved, relocating in November 2024 to a new spot at 180 Route 35 next to Macy's, complete with a new café.
If your routine at the mall was a movie at the AMC, browsing Boscov's, or a Saturday stop at Barnes & Noble, none of that changed. The only real disruption to daily errands so far is that Barnes & Noble's old spot is now Whole Foods, and that's an upgrade for grocery shopping, not a loss.
The Number That Explains Why It Feels Different
Here's the part that doesn't match the tone of the coverage. Monmouth Mall, in its enclosed, two-level form, held roughly 1.5 million square feet of gross leasable space, making it the sixth-largest mall in New Jersey at its peak. The open-air Monmouth Square that's replacing it is planned for about 990,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space. Kushner's own account of the project describes cutting the mall's retail footprint by about 40 percent over the past two years of demolition and construction.
That square footage didn't vanish. It became roughly 1,000 apartments under a residential brand called Livana, built around a shared pool, a fitness center, and a two-acre public green, with occupancy now targeted for this winter. Full build-out of the entire property, according to the most recent reporting, isn't expected to wrap until 2028.
So the honest way to describe Monmouth Square isn't "a mall getting a bigger, trendier tenant roster." It's a mall that's getting physically smaller as a retail destination and considerably more residential. The New York-coded food brands signing leases there, Felice, Prince Street Pizza, Van Leeuwen, are a signal about who Kushner expects to fill those roughly 1,000 apartments, not evidence that Eatontown is getting a shopping upgrade on the scale of what used to stand there.
The Actually Useful Anchor Nobody's Posting About
While the food-brand names get the headlines, the piece of this redevelopment that's been quietly serving Eatontown residents for a while now is medical, not culinary. The Anne Vogel Family Care & Wellness Center, a two-story building operated by RWJBarnabas Health and built around care for women, mothers, and children, has been open on the property since before Whole Foods arrived. Reporting on the broader redevelopment plan describes it as an 82,000-square-foot anchor, with more than 30,000 additional square feet of medical office space coming online through a separate ground lease with Rendina Healthcare Real Estate.
That's a functioning, daily-use piece of Monmouth Square that residents have been able to use for months, and it barely shows up in coverage built around chasing the next restaurant announcement.
What This Actually Means Heading Into Winter
If you live in Eatontown and you're trying to figure out what to expect from the old mall property between now and the end of the year, here's the realistic version. Whole Foods is open and fully operational. Macy's, Boscov's, the AMC, and Barnes & Noble haven't gone anywhere. Felice is the next name most likely to actually open, sometime in the fourth quarter of 2026, in the new public green at the center of the property. The Livana apartments are targeting occupancy this winter, which will start changing the character of that intersection well before most of the retail names on the list ever open a door. And the full vision, the version with a completed public green, all the signed restaurants operating, and the apartments filled, isn't scheduled to be finished until 2028.
None of that makes the redevelopment a disappointment. It makes it a multi-year project that's being covered like a series of grand openings when it's actually a long build-out with one real opening so far. Knowing the difference between a signed lease and an open door is the only way to plan a weekend, or a year, around it accurately.
Eatontown's slice of Monmouth County keeps changing shape, and the Monmouth Square build-out is one of the more visible examples of it right now. If you're watching how a project like this affects a neighborhood you're already part of, or thinking ahead to how it might shape a future move within Monmouth County, the team at Ten Hoeve Advisory tracks these shifts across Eatontown and the surrounding towns as part of the day-to-day work of knowing this market. You can find more on the neighborhood at our Eatontown guide, or reach out directly if you have questions about what's changing nearby.
