Well over 110 stores trade in the courts of Jersey Shore Premium Outlets in Tinton Falls, NJ, seven days a week.
It began on a November Thursday in 2008, with Burberry, Brooks Brothers, and Kate Spade among the names signed for its storefronts and more than 800 new jobs.
Before that, it was a parcel behind Route 66 with no road to it, waiting on a bridge and a brook.
The names have shifted since. Windsor and Spencer's arrived, Under Armour moved into a bigger space, and a coffee counter opened inside Coach. The center itself stayed the size it was planned at.
Shopping land with no road to Route 66
In August 2001, five parties signed an agreement to carry a new road over Route 66 at Victoria Boulevard.
Two were local governments, the borough of Tinton Falls and neighboring Neptune Township.
Three were private landowners: Joven Centre, Commercial Realty and Resources, and Hovtowne.
The plan called for an overpass across the highway, new ramps, wider lanes on Route 66, and changes around the Garden State Parkway entrance ramps, and the New Jersey Department of Transportation agreed to pay for parts of the work.
Tinton Falls had allowed shopping centers in the area since 1996, but the parcel meant for shops sat back from Route 66.
Anything built there would work only if the new roads went in and stayed legally open to it.
That tied the project to Neptune and to the other private owners who had signed.
Joven Centre held part of the parcel.
By August 2004 it had handed its rights under the road agreement to CPG, the development company of the outlet developer Chelsea Property Group.
That October, Simon Property Group finished buying Chelsea, and the company holding the road rights became part of Simon.
A protected brook redraws the site plan
A tributary of Shark River Brook ran across the land Chelsea meant to build on.
In January 2005 the outlet center won preliminary site-plan approval from the Tinton Falls Planning Board, and final approval followed in May.
Between the two approvals, the borough adopted a stormwater ordinance that kept a 300-foot strip undeveloped along certain waters, with an exemption for projects already holding approvals.
Chelsea's final approval carried a condition: if state environmental permits forced changes to the site, the company had to come back with an amended plan.
Later that May the state Department of Environmental Protection turned down Chelsea's permit applications.
The company revised the project and applied again.
In June the state put Shark River Brook and several named tributaries, the one on Chelsea's land among them, in its Category One class, and that classification brought a 300-foot buffer of its own.
Chelsea redrew the work once more so the affected parts fell outside the department's permitting reach, and in October 2005 the department told the company it needed no state permits.
Chelsea did not go back to the planning board for a new approval.
In February 2006 the Shark River Cleanup Coalition sued to apply the borough's buffer rule, arguing that Chelsea's revisions also required a fresh review.
A trial judge dismissed the case that May.
When the Appellate Division affirmed in June 2007, it held that the 2005 approval had kept its exemption because its legal standing had not changed, and the redrawn plan stood.
Neptune turns against the outlet overpass
The overpass and its ramps cleared their final state transportation approval in November 2005.
The Tinton Falls engineer had worked on the designs and the state approvals since 2002, and the borough had assigned set parts of the project to CPG, which asked for construction bids that December.
Neptune had signed the 2001 agreement and supported it.
During 2005 the township began moving against the deal, and in January 2006, 40 days after the final state approval, it adopted resolutions to void the agreement and asked state transportation officials to revoke the permits the road work needed.
Bids for the work arrived that March.
CPG took Neptune to court, and a trial judge ordered the township to do what the agreement required of it and forbade any interference with the road work, in an order entered in June 2006 and confirmed in August.
The roads the outlet center depended on were legally clear once the Appellate Division affirmed that order in October 2007.
Jersey Shore Premium Outlets opens in 2008
Ground was broken in fall 2007.
On Thursday, November 13, 2008, Jersey Shore Premium Outlets opened in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, east of the Garden State Parkway on the Route 66 corridor.
Chelsea had built an open-air outlet center of about 435,000 square feet on a single level, planned for 120 stores arranged around pedestrian courts.
Burberry, Brooks Brothers, Kate Spade, and Nike were among the brands signed for its storefronts.
More than 800 jobs came with the opening.
Simon's outlet division ran the center, which joined Liberty Village in Flemington and Jackson Premium Outlets in Jackson as Chelsea's third in New Jersey.
Leasing passed 90 percent of the space by the end of January 2009, and adidas and Under Armour were among the retailers by 2010.
Solar panels go up over the stores
In October 2012 Simon and SoCore Energy started building a 335-kilowatt solar array on the roof of Building 8.
When it was finished in 2013, more than 1,300 panels covered about 70 percent of that roof, and the roughly 120 merchants below kept trading through the whole job.
The roofs took a second round.
A phase announced in January 2019 called for nearly 700 more panels on the property, and before the year was out Simon announced new rooftop solar work complete at the center, alongside Clinton Crossing and Jackson Premium Outlets, in a three-center program that put about 600 kilowatts of panels across more than 50,000 square feet of rooftop.
Under Armour moves, Coach adds coffee
Under Armour set a move into bigger space for May 2023 and made it without leaving the center.
The same year brought a round of arrivals.
Windsor opened a new outlet location in March, Lovisa and VellaPais, both smaller-format shops, were scheduled for the spring, and Spencer's, set for July, opened a store of its own.
None of it came with a major expansion of the center.
In December 2024 Coach opened its first coffee shop in North America inside its store at the center.
A custom service counter, a back bar, signage, and new displays went in, and the work was staged around the holiday season.
The store stayed open throughout.
A full outlet center on the same footprint
Simon owns the whole center, and well over 100 stores trade along its courts.
They sell luxury accessories, athletic wear, children's clothing, and food, along with specialty goods and services.
Stores open at 10 every morning and close at 9 Monday through Saturday and at 7 on Sunday.
Coach, Polo Ralph Lauren, Under Armour, and Vineyard Vines are among the larger tenants, and food businesses such as Bubbakoo's Burritos and Planet of the Crepes trade beside them.
Coach Coffee Shop runs inside the Coach store.
The center's leasable floor area is 434,800 square feet; the plan it opened with called for about 435,000.
In 2005 Chelsea had to redraw the outlet center so its construction stayed out of a protected brook's reach.
Every storefront in the center built from that plan is leased.
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