Two Corners Of Fair Lawn Are Changing At The Same Time, And Not The Same Way

If you drive Fair Lawn Avenue past Plaza Road, you've watched that corner sit half-dead for years. An L-shaped strip mall that had cycled through a Grand Union supermarket, a Rite Aid, and most recently a Dollar Tree. The building came down in early spring 2026. For a few months it was just a cleared lot next to the Radburn Clock Tower and the historic Cadmus house, the kind of empty parcel you stop noticing because it's been empty for so long.

On June 11, 2026, that changed. A groundbreaking ceremony brought Governor Mikie Sherrill, Mayor Cristina Cutrone, and developer Kevin Codey of Danbro Properties to the site to start construction on Plaza Greene, a project that will put Bergen County's first Sprouts Farmers Market on the ground floor. Across town on Broadway, a different kind of change has been happening all year in smaller, quieter moves: a bakery rebuilding after a fire, a decades-old pub renovating its storefront, a wine shop reopening under a new facade. Both stories are about investment. Neither is about the same kind of money, and that difference tells you something real about how this town works.

What's Actually Going Up At Plaza Road

Plaza Greene is a four-story, mixed-use building rising on Block 3726, spanning the lots where the old strip mall stood. The plan calls for 145 age-restricted apartments, split between 127 market-rate units and 18 designated affordable units, sitting on top of roughly 24,000 square feet of retail. More than 22,000 of that retail square footage is spoken for already: a Sprouts Farmers Market, the Phoenix-based natural and organic grocery chain that has never had a Bergen County location before this one.

The site plan includes a garage and 299 parking spaces, along with underground parking for residents and a rooftop courtyard featuring lounge seating, grills, and a media wall. What matters more for anyone who isn't moving into one of the 145 units is what sits at street level and how it connects to the Radburn Train Station directly across the corner. The development team secured a public access easement straight from NJ Transit, and the site plan includes wider sidewalks, new street trees, and updated lighting meant to make the walk from the platform to the storefronts feel like part of the same place instead of two separate errands.

Construction is expected to run about 18 months, according to Kevin Codey, which points toward the Sprouts opening sometime in late 2027. The project reportedly closed on a $66.85 million construction loan, the kind of financing commitment that signals lenders see this corner differently than they did when it was a struggling strip mall. Fair Lawn Main Street Board Chair Gail Rottenstrich put the stakes plainly at the groundbreaking:

"This transformational redevelopment will revitalize the Fair Lawn Avenue portion of the Special Improvement District, bringing a much needed grocery store back to the center of Fair Lawn, as well as housing for residents over 55 and for people with special needs."

Across Fair Lawn Avenue from the construction site sits the Topps property, also designated as an area in need of redevelopment and still undergoing remediation. Whatever happens there next, Plaza Greene is the corner's first real answer in years to what replaces a supermarket once it leaves.

Sixty Years Of The Same Corner Trying To Work

Part of why this groundbreaking landed the way it did is the corner's history. That parcel has held a Grand Union supermarket, a Rite Aid, and a Dollar Tree at different points over roughly 60 years, which means most longtime residents have shopped that corner under at least one of those names. When the last tenant closed and the building sat empty, it wasn't a new problem. It was the same corner failing to hold a use, again.

A grocery store returning there isn't a novelty for Fair Lawn. It's a restoration of something the corner used to do reliably before it stopped. That's a different story than a brand-new development claiming unclaimed land, and it's worth knowing the difference if you've lived here long enough to remember when that lot actually worked.

Broadway Is Solving A Different Problem

While Fair Lawn Avenue waits on a construction timeline measured in months, Broadway has been filling in through smaller, faster moves. Fair Lawn Main Street Inc., the nonprofit that manages both of the borough's Special Improvement Districts, runs a Facade Improvement Program that provides up to $10,000 in support for storefront changes, and the corridor's track record includes:

• JJ's Pub, on the corner of Broadway and Plaza Road, a bar and grill locals have frequented for 45 years, cutting the ribbon on a renovated storefront with local officials on hand.
• Morlot Wines & Liquors cutting the ribbon on a new storefront of its own.
• Just A Taste Of New Jersey, home to Carson's Cookie Dough at 25-05 Broadway, a retail space that also employs young adults with autism, selling goods from other local businesses that employ differently abled individuals.
• PHUHROO opening at 30-08 Broadway.

This year, that same push showed up in food elsewhere in town. Zadies Bake Shop, a fourth-generation kosher bakery, reopened at 2150 Promenade Boulevard in late April 2026 after a 2024 fire forced it out of its previous location. Parfait Cafe opened at 95 Lincoln Avenue in mid-May 2026, serving crepes, gelato, and coffee seven days a week.

None of this is transit-oriented development with an eight-figure construction loan behind it. It's facade grants, ribbon cuttings, and independent owners deciding their storefront is worth fixing up rather than walking away from. Fair Lawn Main Street Inc. also secured a $43,500 grant to plan streetscape improvements along Broadway, covering sidewalks, lighting, furniture, public art, and traffic calming, which suggests the borough is trying to give that corridor the same kind of physical upgrade Plaza Greene is bringing to Fair Lawn Avenue, just through a slower, cheaper process built around dozens of small businesses instead of one large one.

The Summer Calendar Doesn't Care Which Corridor You're On

If you want a reason to walk either street this week, the borough's free Summer Concert Series is down to its final two dates. Every show runs at Memorial Park's Robert "Scooter" Young Special Events Stage on Sunday evenings starting at 8 p.m., and the season closes out with:

• August 23: Kover-Up Band
• August 30: Cameos

Bring a lawn chair. Seating is available in the parking lot, and the borough reschedules for rain. It's a small, recurring thing, the kind of civic programming that existed long before Plaza Greene broke ground and will keep running after the Sprouts opens, but it's also a decent excuse to see both ends of downtown in the same evening if you time a walk down Broadway before the show.

What This Actually Means If You Live Here

The easy read on all of this is that Fair Lawn is "changing," which is true of every town in every year and tells you nothing useful. The more specific read is that two different kinds of capital are moving through this borough at once, at two different speeds, solving two different problems. Plaza Greene is a single large bet, financed with an eight-figure construction loan, aimed at fixing one corner that had cycled through tenants for decades. The Broadway activity is dozens of smaller bets, financed by facade grants and individual owners, aimed at keeping a long-running shopping district from feeling tired one storefront at a time.

Neither approach replaces the other. A town needs both a grocery store its residents can walk to and a main street where a 45-year-old pub can still afford to renovate. Watching which one moves faster, and which one needs the other to succeed, is a better way to understand what Fair Lawn actually is right now than any single headline about a new supermarket.

If you're already keeping an eye on how this town is evolving because you're weighing a move within it, or wondering what a corner like Plaza Road does to property values nearby, that's the kind of question Monique Belgrave spends her time answering for Bergen County clients. Work with Monique when you're ready to turn what you're noticing about this town into an actual plan.