Before there was a mall, this was open farmland in central Middlesex County. The ground was flat, the site was easy to build on, and Route 18 made it easy to reach.
On June 6, 1969, the Ostroski family sold the land to Macy's Corporation. A little more than a year later, on September 10, 1970, the new Bamberger's in East Brunswick opened to a huge crowd.
By noon, about 25,000 people had already come through the store. Route 18 was adding more businesses every year, and Bamberger's became one of the clearest signs of that growth.
It was a large department store with a broad parking lot, built to bring people in from well beyond East Brunswick.
They did come. Families drove over from Old Bridge, South Brunswick, and Piscataway. The opening felt bigger than an ordinary day of shopping. It felt like a local occasion.
Most of the people walking across the lot that morning were not thinking about the farmland that had been there before, or about what the property might look like decades later.
They were looking at a brand-new store in a part of New Jersey that was changing fast.
How Brunswick Square Rose from the Fields
R. H. Macy and the Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation formed a joint venture with plans that went well beyond a single Bamberger's building.
In 1972, the East Brunswick Planning Board approved a full second phase. That approval allowed a second anchor department store and more than 60 interior retail spaces.
The first stores in the new section began opening in April 1973. By mid-1974, nearly all of the tenant spaces were in operation.
The completed center covered about 750,000 square feet on roughly 75 acres. It had 4,112 parking stalls, and JCPenney occupied the north anchor spot.
The Bamberger's and JCPenney buildings stood on separate tax lots. Both were linked to the central mall through an operating agreement dating to 1972.
In legal terms, it was a group of connected parcels and easements, each with its own deed and each tied to the others through a private agreement.
The setup worked without drawing attention. For the people walking across the parking lot, it all functioned as one shopping center.
Two Companies, One Deal, One Shopping Center
Macy's owned the Bamberger's building. DeBartolo controlled the developer parcels that made up the central corridor.
In the mid-1980s, Macy's sold its mall ownership interests, and DeBartolo bought the company's stake in Brunswick Square. Macy's kept ownership of its store building.
That division remained in place through every later ownership change. In 1986, the Bamberger's name was dropped and replaced with Macy's.
From the parking lot, this looked like a simple name change on the sign.
The Second Story That Never Got Built
In 1990, DeBartolo returned to the East Brunswick Planning Board with an expansion plan that would have changed Brunswick Square in a major way.
The approved plan called for about 200,000 square feet of second-story retail space, a new food court, a larger movie theater, and a parking deck with about 700 additional spaces.
At that size, the project would have put Brunswick Square in competition with the largest regional malls in New Jersey.
Construction never began. The early-1990s recession hurt DeBartolo's finances, and the expansion was dropped.
DeBartolo became a public company in 1994. Simon Property Group finished acquiring the company in 1996, making Simon the new controlling owner of Brunswick Square.
Brunswick Square became one of roughly 180 shopping centers in Simon's portfolio.
That scale placed Brunswick Square under the ownership of a major national mall operator, but the property saw relatively little expansion or reinvestment, and the approved second-floor addition remained unbuilt.
Barnes & Noble and a Renovation in the 1990s
Around 1999, Simon carried out a smaller but still important update at Brunswick Square. A 25,000 square foot Barnes & Noble was added, the movie theater was expanded, and the inside of the mall was renovated.
It was a scaled-down version of the larger plan DeBartolo had proposed in 1990.
In the mid-2000s, Brunswick Square's occupancy rate stood at 96.4 percent. Macy's, JCPenney, and Barnes & Noble were among the main anchors.
A freestanding Commerce Bank branch was built on a pad site along Route 18 in 2001. It later became TD Bank.
Olive Garden had been on its parcel since around 1990. Firestone had operated at the site for more than 30 years.
In 2012, renovations to the JCPenney wing added exterior entrances. They brought in new tenants, including Panera Bread at about 4,000 square feet, Tilted Kilt at about 5,900 square feet, and GoWireless.
Habit Burger Grill was completed in 2022. It was the most recent addition to the outparcel lineup before redevelopment began.
More than 40 years after the mall opened, new tenants were still being added around the edges of the property.
Simon, Washington Prime, and Foreclosure
In 2014, Simon spun Brunswick Square off into a new company called Washington Prime Group, along with a group of smaller and mid-tier properties.
Washington Prime's portfolio was heavily made up of enclosed malls that were already under pressure, and Brunswick Square was one of them.
Brunswick Square had long been one of East Brunswick's largest taxpayers. Foreclosure proceedings began in 2021, and the property entered receivership.
On November 1, 2023, Paramount Realty and Edgewood Properties announced that they had acquired the mall.
They identified it as a 755,000 square foot property that was fully occupied at the time of purchase.
The tenant list included Macy's, JCPenney, Old Navy, AMC Theatres, Barnes & Noble, Foot Locker, Hollister, Forever 21, and Red Robin.
In the same announcement, Paramount also said the property would undergo a complete redevelopment.
A Formal Study and a Vote to Redevelop
The East Brunswick Redevelopment Agency passed a resolution on November 18, 2024, sending the mall property into formal investigation.
The planning board authorized a study on December 18, 2024, and inspectors showed up at Brunswick Square in December and again in February 2025.
They did not come back with a glowing report. The main building fronts looked neglected and uninviting.
Loading docks and service areas were a mess in nearly every part of the property, and they were visible from the street.
A planner who walked through Macy's on two separate visits found water leaking inside the building both times.
Officials also cited bad site layout, an outdated physical design, too much paved surface, and general deterioration.
Mayor's December 2024 letter added the broader point - the mall had gone nearly 50 years without any real updating, and the township was not interested in trying to patch it back into a conventional retail center.
The future, in the mayor's view, had to lean toward entertainment, recreation, and services.
On March 24, 2025, the township council passed Resolution 25-139, designating the Brunswick Square lots as a condemnation redevelopment area.
Open-Air Redevelopment and the Tenants That Remained
Construction began on December 15, 2025. The redevelopment will remove the enclosed mall roof and convert the interior corridor plan into an open-air format with outward-facing storefronts.
New tenants announced for the redeveloped property included Nordstrom Rack, J.Crew, PGA Tour Superstore, Sola Salon, KidStrong, The Picklr, Fun City Adventure Park, and Hackensack Meridian Health.
The mix focused heavily on fitness, recreation, medical services, and off-price retail.
Existing tenants that stayed open during construction included Barnes & Noble, AMC Theater, JCPenney, Macy's Clearance, Panera Bread, Twisted Crab, LensCrafters, Results Boxing, Kids United, Olive Garden, Habit Burger, and Firestone.
The township refunded about $1 million to the owners after deciding that the property had been overassessed based on rent rolls.
The former Ostroski farmland, now more than 55 years into its commercial use, is changing again.
Brunswick Square
Shopping mall in in East Brunswick, NJ
Address: 755 NJ-18, East Brunswick, NJ 08816
Opened: 1970
Closed: January 10, 2026
Developer: Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation
Owner: Paramount Realty Services, Inc.
Floor area: 769,041 sq ftClosest cities:
Old Bridge, NJ
South Brunswick, NJ
Piscataway, NJ
New Brunswick, NJ
North Brunswick, NJ
Edison, NJ
Sayreville, NJ
Monroe Township, NJ
