“The town — if it’s a redevelopment area — is in the driver’s seat,” said James Hughes, a professor of urban planning and policy development at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. “They could acquire the land and totally control it.”
Topic
Livingston Mall
A zombie mall is gasping in North Jersey, hit by a ‘perfect storm’
Urban centers like Newark and Jersey City, as well as downtowns like Ridgewood and Westfield, rebounded in the past decade and drew back dollars that had gone to malls, Hughes said.
By themselves, any one of those factors could have caused malls to struggle, other than the top-tier ones in New Jersey like Garden State Plaza and American Dream…
“Sort of the perfect storm hit,” Hughes said of Livingston Mall.