Broadway Commons Cleared Its Last Town Vote. Here's What Stays, What Comes Down and What's Open This Season

You can still buy a sofa, a set of holiday dishes and a few rounds of bowling at Broadway Commons. You can't get a slice in the food court anymore. The remaining food court restaurants closed for good on New Year's Eve 2025, while the larger restaurants with their own outside entrances were still running that January. The businesses with doors facing the parking lot outlasted the ones you had to walk the mall to reach.

On October 22, the Town of Oyster Bay approved the last five variances for the "Shops on Broadway." That $200 million plan from K/BTF Broadway LLC does the same thing to the rest of the property. Newsday reported that these were considered the final municipal hurdles. News 12 Long Island reported on November 2 that demolition is expected to begin in early 2027. The new design is built around the stores that survived the decline.

The Three Anchors the Plan Keeps

IKEA, Target and Round1 Bowling & Arcade are the current tenants the developer has committed to keeping in the redeveloped center, Greater Long Island reported after the July hearing. Each one gets something in the plan:

• IKEA would grow by about 93,000 square feet on top of its current 241,000. The developer needed a variance to put parking under a possible second floor for the store.
• Round1 sets the closing time for the whole site. The developer asked that entertainment businesses be allowed to stay open until 1 a.m., matching the rules Round1 already has.
• Target stays on the roster. Patch reported that Target and Round1 were still open as of the July proposal.

The only confirmed new tenant is a BJ's Wholesale Club with fuel pumps. That means a warehouse club, a big-box retailer, a furniture store and an arcade, all places people drive to and leave with something in the trunk. The plan surrounds that group with new outdoor space.

How the Inside Emptied, One Lease at a Time

The interior didn't close all at once. Over about six years, leases ran out and weren't replaced:

1. 2020. Macy's closed, leaving a 300,000-square-foot building empty.
2. 2023. Old Navy left the site.
3. February 2024. UBS Group AG sold the mall. The buyer, K/BTF, is an ownership group whose owners are all Long Island residents, its attorney told the Town Board.
4. January 5, 2025. The Showcase Cinema de Lux showed its last movie. Some of the upstairs restaurants began leaving soon after as their leases ended, the owner's marketing team told Greater Long Island.
5. December 31, 2025. The remaining food court restaurants closed. The owner had stopped renewing food court leases about a year earlier.
6. February 1, 2026. Buffalo Wild Wings served its last dinner.

The cinema and the food court were the two places people went inside Broadway Commons to stay for a while, and both are gone. Each comes back in the new plan in a different form.

What Gets Built Where the Mall Used to Be

The plan takes the roof off most of the mall and tears down the former Macy's and the Mavis location. The retail space on either side of the Macy's comes down too. Stores would be entered from outside instead of through an indoor-only mall. The finished site would be an open-air shopping and entertainment center of about 1.3 million square feet.

Architect Dennis Flynn of Rosenbaum Design Group split the site into two main areas at the July meeting, according to Patch's account:

• The "district." The former food court becomes the indoor entertainment hub. Round1 and IKEA are part of it, along with space for recreation and theater uses. An April update in Newsday described a smaller replacement movie theater and a proposed three-story restaurant building of 70,000 square feet.
• The "lawn." This outdoor space would most likely be turf, with direct access to the restaurants, a large projection screen and a stage for public events. Buildings would surround it to buffer the noise, and it opens onto the west parking lot. The lawn sits on a waterproof structure because the basement below it will be in use.

The plan keeps two familiar features. The mall's skylight would be visible from the south parking area and used in the center's branding, and a new art canopy would go over the main entrance facing Broadway. The developer sought an architectural variance to build up to 52 feet, with the arched canopy reaching nearly 53 feet, according to Newsday's report on the October zoning hearing. The Macy's building coming down is 85 feet tall. The site isn't inside the Downtown Hicksville Revitalization Zone, but Flynn said his team used that district's guidelines when laying out the walkways.

The plan "will further transform Broadway Commons into a shopping and entertainment destination, continuing the transformation of downtown Hicksville," Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino said in a statement quoted by Newsday.

The Parking Lot Gets Smaller as the Site Gets Busier

If the new center depends on people driving in, parking matters. According to Newsday, the mall has 4,848 parking spaces today and the new plan has 4,092, a drop of 756. Town code calls for 8,315 spaces on the site, so the approved plan has a little under half of what the code would normally require. Civic leaders and traffic experts told Newsday that parking won't be a problem, even after the new businesses open.

Here are the numbers side by side:

The other variances covered lighting and building height. With fewer spaces and a 1 a.m. closing allowed for entertainment businesses, the site would see more evening visits. People coming from the north side will find more of the center's attractions facing the lot they park in.

A Mile South of the Station, on a Different Schedule

The mall project is separate from the town's work in downtown Hicksville. That area around the Long Island Rail Road station is about a mile from the mall, Newsday noted. The public projects there broke ground on July 1, 2025, according to Long Island Press. They include Festival Plaza, a raised pedestrian path by the station, and paving, lighting and space for pop-up shops and cafés under the trestle. Both projects move activity outdoors. The station plan puts cafés under the trestle, and the mall plan takes the roof off most of the building and adds an outdoor lawn with a stage.

At the mall, the next step is demolition, which developer attorney Bram Weber told Newsday comes next. News 12 puts the start in early 2027. Newsday's April report had projected completion in 2028. That leaves one more holiday season with the current layout. IKEA, Target and Round1 are all reached from the parking lot, and the former Macy's still stands at the end of the old corridor.

Downtown, the Hicksville-Jericho Rotary Club's tree lighting is Saturday, December 5, at 5 p.m. in Kennedy Park, with performances by local choirs and dance groups and holiday treats.

New retail plans like this change how buyers see the streets around them. Before the excavators arrive in 2027, it helps to know how your home will be presented and priced against that change. Michelle Zhao Group follows the Broadway corridor closely and can show you what the redevelopment means for your property. Request a Luxury Home Valuation, and we'll walk you through the numbers in English or Chinese.