Answering the question we get asked most about Brunswick Square — and what we found while looking it up.
One of the questions Eyes on EB gets most often is a simple one: what exactly are they building at the mall?
It’s a fair thing to wonder. You can see construction underway right now, and for years there’s been talk about redevelopment and housing at that property. Naturally, people put the two together and assume the work happening today is the start of the apartments.
It isn’t.
What’s going up now is the shopping center’s retail renovation. The housing redevelopment is a completely separate process — and that decision hasn’t been made yet.
Here’s what we found while answering the question. East Brunswick’s own revised Fair Share Plan says a redevelopment plan for Brunswick Square is to be adopted by September 30, 2026. And as of Aug. 27, reviewing every Township Council and Planning Board agenda posted through Aug. 26, we found no Brunswick Square redevelopment plan scheduled on any of them.
That doesn’t mean no draft exists — plans are usually written before they reach an agenda, and agendas often post only days ahead. But it does mean the redevelopment plan has not yet appeared on the public Council or Planning Board agendas we reviewed, and the deadline is about five weeks out.
1. So what are they building right now?
A retail renovation. The enclosed mall is being turned into an open-air shopping center.
Mayor Brad Cohen described it at a July town hall: the property is being reinvested in “right now on the mall side,” and it’s “pretty much going to stay retail.” He named tenants moving in — Nordstrom Rack, a PGA golf store, J Crew, Fun City — and ones staying, including Barnes & Noble, LensCrafters and Results Boxing. The Redevelopment Agency was told in June the mall work is “scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.”
That’s the construction. Stores, not housing.
2. Then what’s the housing plan?
Every New Jersey town has a legal obligation to provide a realistic opportunity for affordable housing. The state rewrote those rules in 2024, replacing the old Council on Affordable Housing with a court-supervised process on a fixed schedule.
East Brunswick is in that process now — the “Fourth Round,” covering 2025 through 2035. Its plan is on file with the Superior Court in Middlesex County, and part of how the township proposes to meet its obligation is by putting housing at Brunswick Square.
The township’s Fourth Round Housing Element and Fair Share Plan, revised this past February, states it directly: a redevelopment plan for the mall site will be prepared “including a required affordable housing set-aside component, to be adopted by September 30, 2026.“
That date isn’t something someone floated at a meeting. It’s written into the plan the township filed with the court, after the township asked for and received an extension.
3. What’s actually been decided? Less than you’d think.
The Fair Share Plan includes a page describing the Brunswick Square site. Here’s what it says:
- Total units: TBD
- Affordable units: TBD
- Unit types: TBD
- Set-aside: 20% affordable
The written Fair Share Plan calls for a 20% affordable set-aside. But 20% of what hasn’t been decided. The plan says only “a portion” of the site’s 81 acres would become housing, and that density will be “determined in discussion with the developer.”
You may have heard the number 60. At a Feb. 25 Planning Board meeting, the township’s affordable housing planner, Kate Keller, told the board the Brunswick Square redevelopment “will be a minimum of 60 affordable units in inclusionary housing or potential for supportive housing.”
That’s a planner’s working estimate, said aloud at a public meeting. It is not what the adopted plan says. The operative document — the one filed with the court — still reads TBD. Both are worth knowing, and the difference matters: there is no approved unit count for Brunswick Square, and you can’t work backward from 60 to figure out how big the project will be.
One more thing worth clearing up — and here we owe readers a correction of our own. “The mall” isn’t one property, and it isn’t three.
Covering a council meeting last November, we reported the mayor’s description: the mall is entirely privately owned, and “multiple entities — the mall itself, Macy’s, and JCPenney — own different portions.” He put it memorably: “News flash — we don’t own it.”
That was accurate as far as it went. But checked against county property records, the redevelopment area is more divided than three: ten separate lots with at least seven different owners along Route 18 and Summerhill Road. Brunswick Square proper and three adjoining parking and vacant parcels belong to a Lakewood company, E&P at East Brunswick LLC. The JCPenney building is owned by JCPenney’s own corporate real estate arm. The Olive Garden parcel belongs to an entity managed by Darden Restaurants. The tire and auto shop is Bridgestone’s. Three more lots belong to three other companies. The plan itself calls the site “Brunswick Square Mall and Pad Sites.”
That’s not a technicality. A redevelopment plan has to work across all of it — part of why this takes time.
(As for Macy’s: the mayor said in November that Macy’s no longer owns its building and is renting through 2027, and in July that the store is due out by April. County records confirm Macy’s owns no property in East Brunswick. Which company owns that building now, we couldn’t determine.)
4. What happens between now and Sept. 30 — and when do you get a say?
First, some plain English about a phrase that sounds worse than it is.
In March 2025 the Township Council declared the mall site an area in need of redevelopment — technically a “Condemnation Area in Need of Redevelopment,” under Resolution 25-139. That designation is the first step in a legal process. It doesn’t approve housing, rezone anything, or authorize a single apartment. It gives the township the legal footing to write a redevelopment plan.
The word “condemnation” means the designation carries the potential authority to acquire property by eminent domain. We found nothing indicating the township intends to use it, and Keller told the Planning Board that on the township’s housing sites generally, “each of the property owners are all on board” and “we’re not rezoning anybody against their will.”
So here’s where things actually stand:
| Step | Status |
|---|---|
| Area declared in need of redevelopment | ✅ Done, March 2025 |
| Redevelopment plan adopted | ❌ Not done — due Sept. 30 |
| A developer chosen | ❌ Not in any record we found |
| A building plan filed and approved | ❌ Not done |
| Construction | ❌ Not done |
Keller laid out the route at the February meeting: the plan “would go start at council, but it would come before you for a consistency review, as redevelopment plans do.” After that, the Planning Board is done “until site plan applications start coming in.”
In order, that means: the Council introduces the plan at a public meeting; the Planning Board reviews it in public for consistency with the township’s master plan; the Council holds a public hearing and votes. Later, a developer gets selected, files an actual building plan, and the Planning Board holds a second round of hearings with legal notice to nearby property owners.
So there are two chances to weigh in: one on the rules for the site, which has to happen before Sept. 30, and one on the actual buildings, later.
The next Township Council meeting is Sept. 14.
To be clear about what hasn’t happened
The township hasn’t missed anything. Sept. 30 hasn’t arrived. Every other piece of East Brunswick’s housing plan was adopted on schedule in March — the mall plan is the one remaining item, and it’s on an extension the court granted.
Keller told the board in February that because of that extension “the township will still be in compliance,” and that officials are “actively working and pursuing that.”
What we couldn’t establish is what happens if Sept. 30 passes without a plan adopted. State law spells out consequences for missing the earlier township-wide deadline in March, which East Brunswick met. Whether the same applies to this specific extension isn’t stated in any document we obtained, and we’re not going to guess. We’ve requested the underlying court records.
What to watch
- The Sept. 14 Township Council meeting — watch the agenda to see whether the redevelopment plan appears
- The Planning Board agenda — a consistency review has to happen before adoption
- The plan itself, when it posts. That’s what will finally say how many homes, how tall, and where on the 81 acres
- Sept. 30
We’ll report the plan the moment it appears.
Sources: Township of East Brunswick Fourth Round Housing Element and Fair Share Plan, revised February 2026; East Brunswick Planning Board minutes, Feb. 25, 2026; Township Council Resolution 25-139, March 24, 2025, as cited in the Fair Share Plan; Mayor’s Town Hall, July 16, 2026 (EBTV); East Brunswick Redevelopment Agency minutes, June 15, 2026; Middlesex County Board of Taxation assessment records; Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Middlesex County, Docket MID-L-000119-25. Agendas reviewed via the township’s Agenda Center.
