The Old Sunrise Mall Finally Has a Plan, and It Covers About a Third of the Property

For most of 2025 and the first half of 2026, the question circulating around Massapequa dinner tables and the pumps along Sunrise Highway was some version of the same thing: what is actually going into that mall? There's an answer now, but it's smaller and more specific than most people assume. Of the roughly 77 acres that make up the old Sunrise Mall property, about 27 have a filed, under-review plan attached to them. The other 50 acres, more than half the site, still don't have one.

That gap matters more than the headline about a new tenant. It changes what residents should actually expect to see rise out of that empty parking lot over the next few years, and it changes the kind of traffic that comes with it.

Fifty-Three Years, Four Closing Dates

Sunrise Mall opened on August 30, 1973, built by the Muss-Tankoos Corporation as the first two-level shopping mall on Long Island. Its original anchors were JCPenney, Gertz, Macy's, and E.J. Korvette, four names that, between them, defined a generation of South Shore shopping trips.

The unwinding took longer than the rise. Here's the sequence, in the dates that actually mark it:

• February 2022: Owner Urban Edge Properties announces it will not renew leases for the roughly 50 remaining interior tenants, opening the door to redevelopment.
• September 2022: The mall's koi pond, home to more than 50 fish for over 25 years, gets relocated to local schools and the Long Island Aquarium ahead of demolition planning. It sounds like a footnote, but it became a small, real marker of how much the building's minor details meant to people who grew up around it.
• March 23, 2025: Macy's closes its East Massapequa location, part of a nationwide round of 66 store closures.
• April 4, 2026: Dick's Sporting Goods, the last remaining tenant, hands back the keys, leaving the 1.3-million-square-foot building completely vacant for the first time in more than half a century.

Four years passed between the lease announcement and the final closure. That slow unwind is worth holding in your head, because what comes next is not moving at the same pace.

What's Actually on the Table: A Warehouse, Not a Retail Comeback

A site plan currently under review by the Town of Oyster Bay's Planning and Development Department outlines a proposal to demolish a portion of the mall and construct a 150,348-square-foot Amazon warehouse and delivery facility, along with a separate vehicle fleet service and inspection building. The project would sit on 26.7 acres of the property, just west of Route 110.

The numbers attached to it are concrete. The proposal is expected to employ 75 to 100 warehouse workers and up to 305 drivers, and construction is estimated to take about 13 months once approvals are secured. A source close to the town review told the Massapequa Post that no construction is expected before 2027, since the plan still requires a full environmental review, building plan evaluation, and public hearings.

That last point is easy to miss in the excitement of finally seeing movement on the site. This is a proposal in active municipal review, not a done deal with a groundbreaking date on the calendar.

The Acreage Math Nobody's Doing

Here's where the story gets more interesting than "Amazon is coming." Urban Edge's own Q1 2026 earnings call, reported by CoStar, confirmed the company is under contract to sell a piece of the property for $79.5 million, and company officials had previously disclosed that transaction as covering about one-third of the roughly 77-acre site. CEO Jeffrey Olson told analysts the entitlement process is "advancing on schedule," and COO Jeffrey Mooallem noted that with Dick's giving back the keys, the company could "advance our plans rapidly into later this year" for the rest of the land.

Do the arithmetic on that and you get roughly the same 26 to 27 acres tied to the Amazon proposal. Which means the remaining acreage, somewhere around 50 acres, over half the original mall footprint, is still an open question. Urban Edge has said it's "finalizing plans" for retail and other uses on that land, but as of the most recent public reporting, nothing there has reached the same filed, under-review stage as the warehouse piece.

For a resident trying to picture the corner of Sunrise Highway five years from now, the honest answer right now is: warehouse and delivery operation on about a third of it, and genuinely undetermined on the rest.

What Local Officials Are Actually Saying

Reaction on the ground has been mixed, and it's coming from people who have real stakes in the outcome, not just observers. Town Councilwoman Laura Maier, who owns Dairy Queen and Jersey Mike's locations nearby, called the news encouraging.

"The closure of the mall had a real impact on all of us who rely on steady foot traffic. Bringing in new retail and an Amazon facility has the potential to restore energy to the area, create jobs, and drive consistent customer flow again."

A pizzeria owner along Sunrise Highway told the Massapequa Post that a nearby Amazon workforce could be good for his business too, simply from more people needing lunch nearby. Robin Hepworth, president of the Chamber of Commerce of the Massapequas, struck a more measured note, saying she's heard strong feelings on both sides and sees the chamber's role as supporting local business while pushing for responsible development.

Massapequa Park Mayor Dan Pearl has said he's sought a meeting with Amazon representatives about the project, but as of the most recent reporting, none has happened. That detail is worth sitting with. If the village's own mayor hasn't been able to get Amazon on the phone yet, it's a reasonable bet that most of what residents are hearing right now is still coming secondhand, through site plans and earnings calls rather than direct community briefings.

What the Building Meant Before It Became a Question Mark

None of the planning language captures what the mall actually was to the people who grew up around it. One longtime Massapequa resident, in a Facebook post that circulated locally this spring, described driving past the empty building and being flooded with memories both good and complicated: shopping trips to JCPenney and Korvette's with his mother, lunch at the Woolworth's counter with his grandmother, feeding the koi in that pond that eventually needed new homes, arcade afternoons, movie nights, and stops at Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour.

That kind of memory is exactly why the koi relocation got as much local attention as it did back in 2022. It wasn't really about the fish. It was an early, small signal that something permanent was actually ending, years before the last register at Dick's Sporting Goods finally closed for good.

Where This Leaves the Neighborhood

The honest version of this story isn't "Sunrise Mall is coming back to life." It's that a specific, filed, and reviewable portion of the property, a little more than a third of it, is on track to become a 24-hour logistics operation with warehouse workers and delivery drivers, not a shopping destination. The rest of the land, more than half the original footprint, doesn't have a confirmed plan yet, whatever Urban Edge's finalizing language suggests.

If you drive Sunrise Highway regularly, that distinction should shape what you actually expect over the next year or two: municipal hearings and environmental review before any dirt moves, a construction window that the town itself says won't start before 2027, and a property that will likely look like a work in progress for a while longer, with real uncertainty about what fills the other half once the warehouse piece is settled.

The Kim Holland Homes Team has spent years working these same South Shore streets, and we keep an eye on local developments like this one because they shape the neighborhood our clients live in and love, long before they ever show up as a line item in a listing. If you're curious about how a change like this might affect a specific block, a commute, or a property you're keeping an eye on, get in touch with the Kim Holland Homes Team. We're happy to talk through what we're seeing on the ground.