On New Year's Eve, the food court at Broadway Commons served its last order and closed the gate. A mile south of where most Jericho residents live, an entire indoor concourse went quiet in a single evening. Meanwhile, up on Jericho Turnpike, tables at Opus and Tap Room are booked three deep on a Saturday night. The center of gravity has shifted, and if you have been eating and shopping the same way for the last five years, this summer is the season you notice.
Here is the thesis, stated plainly: the Jericho weekend routine that used to orbit the enclosed mall on Broadway is quietly relocating to Jericho Turnpike and Woodbury Village while the mall itself is rebuilt into something residents will barely recognize by 2027. What you do on a Wednesday night in August is being decided in Town Board hearings this month.
The Mall Going Quiet, In Stages
Broadway Commons has been the default fallback for a rainy Sunday for two generations of Jericho and Hicksville families. That default is expiring. On January 1, 2026, all the stores in the top food court area closed down in preparation for the "dining and entertainment district" remodeling, with the last closing on New Year's Eve a day prior.
What comes next is a much larger teardown. Days ago, the ownership group presented its plan to the Oyster Bay Town Board. The proposed $200 million redevelopment, known as the Shops on Broadway, would replace much of the aging indoor mall with restaurants, an outdoor plaza, entertainment options and a BJ's Wholesale Club. Attorney Bram Weber, who represents K/BTF Broadway LLC, the ownership group that purchased the mall in 2024, presented the proposal to the Oyster Bay Town Board during a public hearing.
The scope is not cosmetic. The plan is for Broadway Commons, which opened in 1956 as the Mid-Island Shopping Plaza, to go back to being open rather than all indoors, with the proposal calling for the demolition of the former Macy's and Mavis location, the removal of the roof from the majority of the existing mall, and the addition of green spaces throughout the property. As part of the redesign, the current food court will be transformed into a new dining and entertainment district. A BJ's Wholesale Club will also be added to the property, which will include BJ's gas station pumps. Developers said a new community green space could host outdoor movie nights, performances and other activities. The redevelopment could also include indoor bounce attractions and mini-golf.
If you own a home within a five-minute drive, three practical things follow. Your weekend errands will fragment across more trips for the next 18 months. The BJ's changes the closest membership-warehouse calculus on the North Shore. And the property's evening use, currently near zero after 9 p.m., is being designed to keep people on-site for dinner and a show. That last piece is what interests residents most, because it directly competes with the corridor where dinner already happens.
Where Dinner Actually Happens Now
The Jericho Turnpike stretch between South Oyster Bay Road and the Syosset line has been quietly consolidating the market's high-end and mid-market dining for three years. This is not a "hidden gem" list. These are the rooms locals already know, ranked by what they do best on a specific night.
| Room | Where | Best used for |
|---|---|---|
| Opus Steakhouse | Jericho Turnpike | Anniversary, deal-closing dinner, wine flights |
| Market Bistro | Jericho | Weeknight dinner that still feels like an occasion |
| Bar Frites | Jericho | Walk-in bistro night, outdoor tables |
| Tap Room Jericho | 1 Jericho Turnpike | Weekend brunch, live music, watching the game |
| Rustic Root | Woodbury Village | Saturday brunch, casual family dinner |
| The Milleridge Inn | Hicksville / Jericho border | Sunday brunch with visiting parents |
A few of those need context.
Opus is doing the heaviest lifting on the luxury end. Enjoy succulent steakhouse classics such as Prime Porterhouse for 2 or Rustic Pork Chop prepared in our open kitchen. Love seafood? Delight your palate with Dover Sole, Sea Bass, or whole fish that is flown in daily from the best waters from around the world. Plus, enjoy a wide selection of mouthwatering sushi & sashimi prepared with only the finest & freshest ingredients. Opus's wine list features over 600 selections, 40 of which are available by the glass. That wine program alone puts it in a different tier from anything the mall's future dining district can realistically match on day one.
Tap Room is doing the opposite job, and doing it well. Visit Tap Room Jericho, situated at 1 Jericho Turnpike, for a fantastic dining experience with friends and family. Our gastropub is an ideal spot for casual gatherings, featuring elevated pub fare from our scratch kitchen, handcrafted cocktails, and 24 beers on tap! On weekends, enjoy our live music, DJs, and brunch. Sports fans, catch a game on our numerous TVs for an unforgettable experience. That is the room the Shops on Broadway plan is directly targeting.
For French, Bar Frites is open daily and serves French bistro fare. The menu offers Bistro fare including great comfort food dishes and the classics. The Burgers, Steak Frites, Croque Monsieur and Steamed Mussels served with pomme frites are also among the fan favorites. Some of the Bistro Classics include Escargot, a Frisée and Lardons Salad and Sautéed Skate. Any night of the week can be unique with the Plats du Jour featuring Bouillabaisse, Côte de Boeuf and Coq au Vin to name a few.
And the classic anchor is still standing. Step back in time and enjoy one of Long Island's oldest treasures. Featuring traditional American cuisine, our Restaurant provides Lunch and Dinner service daily. Sunday features our Grand Brunch Buffet including unlimited lobster, shrimp, Nova Scotia salmon, and traditional brunch specialties. After you've enjoyed your meal at the Historic Milleridge Inn, be sure to take a stroll through our quaint village, which resembles Long Island Beginnings with a bakery, general store, and so much more. The Milleridge village model, incidentally, is a preview of what the Shops on Broadway is trying to become: an outdoor cluster where dinner and browsing sit in the same walk.
Free Nights, Booked Chairs
For residents who spent the last decade defaulting to the mall's AMC and a bite in the food court, the outdoor programming inside a fifteen-minute drive has quietly gotten better.
Cantiague Park is the most under-used asset a Jericho address gives you. Cantiague Park in Hicksville, New York, is a 127-acre public park offering golf courses, swimming complexes, playgrounds, and picnic areas. The pool complex, in particular, is the answer to the question of what to do with the kids at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday in August when the driveway hits ninety degrees.
The Town of Oyster Bay's summer concert programming is the other move. The town runs its "Music Under the Stars" free concert series each summer with concerts beginning at 8 p.m., and residents are told they may bring blankets, chairs and coolers, per the town's announcements. The Syosset-Woodbury Community Park has hosted concerts in past years, including a Dean Karahalis and the Concert Pops of Long Island program. Check the town's current calendar for this summer's dates before you commit a Wednesday night.
A quiet piece of advice from the residents who use these programs weekly: the parking lots at these town parks fill 45 minutes before the downbeat, not five. Treat the concert like a Yankees game with a chair.
What The Shops On Broadway Plan Actually Means For Your Wednesday
Most reporting on the redevelopment reads like a press release. Read as a homeowner, the plan says three concrete things.
First, the ownership economics changed in 2024, which is why the pace is moving now. The Hicksville mall was previously owned by investors, who sold the property for just over $40 million to a group of local investors in 2024. Weber said the previous owners were not on top of property management, which led to the mall's decline over time. The mall currently has many vacant storefronts and few restaurant tenants. A local ownership group with $40 million of basis has very different incentives than an out-of-state REIT collecting depreciation, and the $200 million reinvestment number is roughly five times the acquisition price. That is a serious bet.
Second, the design language is aligning with Hicksville's downtown effort rather than fighting it. The mall's representatives said the redevelopment aligns with the town's efforts to revitalize Hicksville's downtown. The town has poured millions of dollars into the area's transit-oriented development with hundreds of new living units, and new spaces either planned, under construction, or completed. Dennis Flynn, the project's lead architect, said he was incorporating architectural features of Hicksville's downtown revitalization into the mall's remodeling, including the arch canopy above the building, the skylight structure at the mall's center, the mall's indoor portion, and the lawn areas. If you live in Jericho, this matters because your resale story starts to include a walkable dining and retail node with a LIRR connection two miles away, not a dying enclosed mall.
Third, approvals are not final. The board left the record open at the conclusion of the meeting, without making a decision on the special use permits. The window to weigh in on traffic, hours, and design is open right now.
The Practical Read
Residents who have lived in Jericho for ten or more years tend to describe the neighborhood by its schools and its ease. Both are still true. What the last twelve months have added is a genuinely reshaping retail and dining picture on both sides of Jericho Turnpike, with a mall redevelopment to the south that will either close the loop or drag it out for two years of construction cones. Either way, the daily texture of a Jericho weekend in 2027 will not look like the one you had in 2023.
If you own a home here and the last time you thought hard about what your address is actually worth was before the mall's food court closed, the ground has moved under you. That is a good conversation to have now, not after the cranes arrive.
Reach out to The DH Citadel Real Estate for a private, no-pressure read on how the corridor's shift is showing up in Jericho values this quarter. Unlock Your Free Home Valuation and #MAKETHATMOVE with a team that actually walks this Turnpike.
