Paramus Park is a shopping mall located in Paramus, New Jersey, United States. It was developed via a joint venture by The Rouse Company, Federated Stores Realty and the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company (now The Cigna Group) through subsidiaries Paramus Park, Inc. and Congen Properties, Inc.
It opened in March 1974, is owned and managed by Centennial Real Estate Management , and has a gross leasable area (GLA) of .Paramus Park, International Council of Shopping Centers. Accessed November 6, 2006 The previous operator was GGP, a subsidiary of Brookfield Properties until June 2026.
Overview
Paramus Park is located on a plot of land between the northbound lanes of Route 17 and the southbound lanes of the Garden State Parkway, approximately from the interchanges of both highways with Route 4. It is accessible from the northbound Garden State Parkway at exit 163 and at exit 165 in both directions. An entrance to the southbound lanes is located in the mall's rear parking lot. Access off of NJ 17 is available on two access roads.
At and with about 100 stores, Paramus Park, compared to the larger Garden State Plaza (which is three times its size), is a more regional, destination-oriented mall, with a higher-than-average sales per square foot, estimated by industry experts to be between or more. In addition to attracting upscale shoppers and tenants, its smaller stores, lower congestion and location along the Garden State Parkway in an affluent area attracted shoppers responding to the Great Recession of 2007-2009, according to a 2011 NorthJersey.com report.Verdon, Joan. "Remodeled Paramus Park draws smaller prototype stores". NorthJersey.com. , August 14, 2011. By 2016, estimates were that the mall had tenants for 97 percent of the stores and was bringing in in sales.Verdon, Joan. "Paramus Park awaits its renaissance", The Record, February 7, 2016. Accessed December 1, 2022. "Real estate research firm Green Street Advisors, in its proprietary mall rankings database, rates Paramus Park as a B+ mall, putting it in the stable category, and says the mall has sales per square foot of roughly $430 and 97 percent occupancy."
The four major malls in the borough—Garden State Plaza (opened in 1957), Bergen Town Center (also 1957), Fashion Center (opened in 1967) and Paramus Park—account for a major portion of the $6 billion in annual retail sales generated in Paramus, more than any other ZIP Code in the United States.Pries, Allison. "Inside the N.J. town where retail spending beats Hollywood and tourism rivals Disney", NJ Advance Media for NJ.com, March 10, 2019. Accessed December 1, 2022. "The former farming community already sees more retail sales than any other zip code in the country (yup, it even beats Beverly Hills' luxurious Rodeo Drive) and it's continuing to add more shopping complexes.... More than $6 billion in retail sales happen in Paramus each year.... Garden State Plaza and the town's second largest mall, the roughly 1 million-square-foot Outlets at Bergen Town Center, are the two malls that made Paramus stand out on the map and began its path to becoming a retail mecca.... The first two malls were built in 1957. Followed by the Fashion Center in 1967 and Paramus Park in 1974."Paramus 07652 , GlobeSt. Retail, October 3, 2005 Paramus Park gets 6 million visitors annually to its 107 stores.Belson, Ken. "In This Town, Even a Mall Rat Can Get Rattled", The New York Times, December 20, 2006. Accessed November 28, 2022. Located in Bergen County, the mall is subject both to the state Blue laws that apply to the entire county by referendumMack Paramus Co. v. Mayor and Council, Casetext. Accessed November 30, 2022. "The State's statutory Sunday blue law, as incorporated in the Code, restricts the sale on Sunday of only five categories of goods. N.J.S.A. 2A:171-5.18. The provisions of the State law are not operative unless the voters of a county adopt the State law by referendum, upon which the statutory prohibition will be applicable on a county-wide basis. N.J.S.A. 2A:171-5.12. The voters in Bergen County, in which Midland Park and Paramus are located, have adopted the State Sunday blue law." and the borough's stricter ordinance, which require them to be closed on Sundays.Strum, Charles. "Sunday-Closing Law Retained in New Jersey County",The New York Times, November 3, 1993. Accessed November 28, 2022. "Efforts to repeal the 34-year-old ban on Sunday retailing in Bergen County, one of the country's richest shopping areas, were turned back easily today....Even if the county laws had been repealed, stores in Paramus would have remained closed because the community enforces its own ordinances against Sunday shopping and has vowed not to lift them" Stew Leonard's, Club Pilates, Atlantic Health System Urgent Care and Glitter and Glam Spa are the only businesses open on Sundays.
History Paramus Park was initially one of three enclosed malls in Paramus at the time of its construction. The Fashion Center, which is located near Paramus Park along Route 17, was the first built specifically as a strictly-indoor facility and opened in 1967. The Bergen Mall, located on Route 4 and built in 1957, became the second when the former outdoor mall was enclosed in 1973. (At the time Garden State Plaza, built in 1957, was still an outdoor mall; it completed its conversion to an enclosed mall in 1984.) Paramus Park remains one of three indoor malls in Paramus; the Fashion Center and The Shoppes on IV, the latter constructed after Paramus Park was built, were converted into outdoor shopping plazas.Verdon, Joan (November 16, 2017). "Mallville USA: Rating the four malls of Paramus. Will they survive?" The Record/NorthJersey.com. Accessed January 17, 2018.
Pre-construction and development The genesis of the mall dates back to efforts by A&S in mid-1966 to identify a site for a location in Bergen County. From 1969 to 1971, Federated Department Stores and The Rouse Company, which had been selected to develop the mall, acquired land for the mall itself, as well as to create a bridge connecting the site to Route 17.Sarno, Bill. "Paramus Park Ready", The Ridgewood News, March 13, 1974. Accessed November 30, 2022, via Newspapers.com. "The initial impetus for the center came from A&S in the spring of 1966. The Brooklyn firm, which will open 300,000 square feet of merchandising area tomorrow, was seeking a Bergen County site. By 1969 the parent firm Federated, was assembling the parcel north of Midland Avenue and the Rouse Co, famous for development of a new city, Columbia. Md., became interested in the project. By the winter of 1970, land was assembled so that an access road linking the site to Route 17, through a bridge over the state highway, and a connection to Winters Avenue and, in turn, to Ridgewood Avenue, was possible. In the spring of 1971, A&S and the Rouse Co. purchased the several tracts of land that became Paramus Park." Federated founded its real-estate development arm Federated Stores Realty in 1972, and this would be one of their first malls, albeit jointly developed with Rouse.
The Rouse Company and Federated Stores Realty formed the subsidiary Paramus Park, Inc. and partnered with Congen Properties, Inc., the real-estate arm of the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company (now The Cigna Group), which would develop, own, and manage the mall. RTKL Associates were the architects of the complex.Kelly, Jacques. "Frank Taliaferro, RTKL founder", The Baltimore Sun, November 30, 2011. Accessed December 22, 2025. "Remembered as a mentor to numerous designers at RTKL, Mr. Taliaferro led architects who refined old retail strip centers and finessed them into shopping malls, including Harundale in Glen Burnie and Paramus Park in New Jersey, known for its early food court." By 1971, a series of lots covering was assembled and the wetlands were drained by October 1972 to create a site for the construction to begin.Paramus Park, Mall Hall of Fame. Accessed December 22, 2025. "Five individual parcels, totaling 64 acres, had been acquired by the spring of 1971.... The mall site, which was a worthless swamp, had to be drained and filled before construction work could get underway, in October 1972."
The mall opened on March 14, 1974,Cahill, Matt. "Paramus Park Mall opens with a splash", The Record, March 15, 1974. Accessed June 21, 2021, via Newspapers.com. "To the splashing of a 6,000-gallon-a-minute waterfall and the buzzing of saws in the background, Paramus Park Mall opened for business and sight-seeing yesterday. Shoppers and spectators seemed to view the opening ceremonies as a momentary diversion from the sight of the terraced, stone waterfall and a 20-foot sculpture of a wild turkey." with a Abraham & Straus (since turned into a Macy's store)"MACY'S: Big in Paramus", The Record, August 25, 2001 via Newspapers.com. and Sears (which did not open until August) as anchors and space for 120 specialty stores. The Paramus High School Marching Band played at the grand opening.
The mall's second-floor food court was an innovation, and is now credited as the first successful shopping mall food court in the United States following The Rouse Company's Gourmet Fair food court for Sherway Gardens in Canada in 1971, which was credited as the first successful food court for North America, and a failed attempt with Plymouth Meeting Mall in 1968 in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. A Fortunoff opened at the store in 1977, the chain's first location in New Jersey.Verdon, Joan. "Fortunoff bets on great outdoors", The Record, February 2, 2010. Accessed December 22, 2025, via Newspapers.com. "1977 - Fortunoff comes to New Jersey, with a store at the new Paramus Park mall."
The mall is shaped as a four-legged zigzag, with an anchor store at each end and the mezzanine-level food court encircling an atrium which featured of water flowing each minute over a terraced waterfall surrounded by vegetation and punctuated by a pair of escalators; claimed to be the nation's second largest, tens of thousands of coins were tossed into the artificial waterfall, with nearly $3,500 collected in the mall's first year.Dvorak, Wes. "Cascades of wishes; Cast coins on waterfall", The Ridgewood News, May 11, 1975. Accessed November 30, 2022, via Newspapers.com. "Anywhere from 16,000-32,000 pennies and silver coins are scooped from the fall's dozen levels each month and handed over to a long list of charities. The small change added up to $3,473.94 in the waterfall's first year. The only larger indoor waterfall in the country is in a Kansas City hotel, according to Paramus Park horticulturist George Crouse. Rising about 30 feet from a base of 2000 square feet, 6000 gallons of water gush and cascades down its dozen tiers each minute." In its first 25 years, some 12 million coins had been collected from the waterfall, with an average of $400 per month donated from the proceeds to charitable organizations in the area.
After opening