Drive down Mowry Avenue this September and you'll notice cars parked in a section of the NewPark Mall lot that has sat mostly empty since Sears left. They aren't there for a sale. They're there for Maha Ganesh Utsav, a Hindu festival scheduled to take over part of the mall property on September 18. A shopping center that spent the better part of a decade losing department stores is now hosting a religious festival in its parking lot, and that single fact tells you more about where Newark is headed than any store directory could.
Here's the part that surprises people who haven't looked closely: NewPark Mall has fewer retailers today than at any point in its history, and it's becoming a more important part of daily life in Newark, not less.
The Anchors That Left
NewPark opened in 1980 with Macy's and Sears anchoring either end. For most of the next three decades it added tenants: Mervyn's in 1985, JCPenney in 1991, a 12-screen AMC with IMAX during a 2016 renovation. Then the departures started stacking up fast. Sears closed in September 2018. JCPenney followed in April 2019. Burlington Coat Factory moved out entirely in 2020, relocating to Pacific Commons rather than staying put. Macy's, the mall's original anchor, closed in March 2025 as part of a nationwide round of 66 store closures.
The mall that once carried more than 140 retailers now holds fewer than 40, as of 2025.
That's not a rounding error. That's a mall that lost roughly three-quarters of its tenant count in under a decade, in a region where Pacific Commons and Union Landing have both pulled retail energy away from the older, enclosed format. If you only counted storefronts, you'd assume NewPark was dying.
What's Filling the Gaps
Storefronts aren't the metric that matters here. Square footage and traffic are, and on that measure the picture flips.
Costco opened its warehouse on the former JCPenney and Burlington site with a grand opening on November 18, 2023, bringing roughly 161,000 square feet of retail, a bakery, pharmacy, optical center, and a 32-pump fuel station to the mall's south end. That's a single tenant occupying more floor space than a dozen of the small shops that used to sit there.
Then in June 2026, T&T Supermarket, a Canadian grocery chain expanding into California, confirmed it will take over the former Macy's building. At more than 72,600 square feet, it will be T&T's largest California location to date, with an expected opening in late 2027. CEO Tina Lee confirmed the project is underway, and the timeline puts a fully stocked, full-scale grocery anchor back on a site that's sat vacant since Macy's closed.
Layer in the city's approved plan for the mall's southern parking lots, which calls for 1,519 new residential units across five buildings, and the shape of the strategy comes into focus. NewPark isn't trying to refill 140 small storefronts. It's consolidating around a handful of destinations big enough to pull people from Fremont and Union City, while adding the residents next door who'll actually walk to them.
The Mall as a Gathering Spot
The Ganesh Utsav booking is not a one-off. NewPark Mall already hosts a Sunday farmers market run by the Agricultural Institute of Marin, a weekly draw that has nothing to do with the anchor tenants and everything to do with foot traffic. Add a mall sitting directly adjacent to the Newark campus of Ohlone College and Newark Memorial High School, and you have a property that pulls people for reasons that have nothing to do with department store sales.
A mall hosting a Hindu festival in its own parking lot is a small detail, but it's the kind of detail that only shows up if you're watching the calendar, not the tenant roster. It suggests the mall's owners see the property's future less as a retail box and more as a piece of shared civic ground, something Newark residents pass through for a dozen different reasons in a given month.
Cedar Boulevard's Quiet Shift
A few minutes south of the mall, Cedar Boulevard is having its own moment. Rasa Bowls opened recently at 39203 Cedar Blvd, a fast-casual spot built around customizable Indian-Mexican fusion bowls, burritos, and tacos, the kind of build-your-own format familiar from Chipotle but stocked with tandoori chicken, paneer, biryani rice, and chutneys instead of guacamole. It's a small business, easy to miss if you're not looking for it.
What makes it worth noting is where it sits. Cedar Boulevard is also home to the SMVS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir at 36665 Cedar Blvd, a temple that hosts regular satsang gatherings. A new restaurant built around Indian flavors opening blocks from an established mandir isn't a coincidence so much as a corridor finding its identity. Newark's food scene has always reflected its residents more than its zip code, and Cedar Boulevard is where that's most visible right now.
The Festival Calendar, All in One Place
No single flyer captures everything on Newark's fall calendar, because no single organization runs it. Here's what's actually scheduled between now and mid-October:
- Newark Days Celebration, September 17 through 20, the city's largest annual gathering with a yearly turnout above 100,000 people. This year's theme is "Adventure Is Just a Page Away," organized by the nonprofit Newark Days Celebration Inc.
- Maha Ganesh Utsav, September 18, held on NewPark Mall property, overlapping directly with the tail end of Newark Days weekend.
- Gran Festival Viva Nicaragua, September 27, at Swiss Park.
- Bongotot Durga Pujo, October 17, at Newark Pavilion.
Stack those four dates against each other and you get something most residents haven't consciously mapped out: a five-week stretch where Newark hosts a citywide celebration, a mall-hosted religious festival, a Nicaraguan cultural festival, and a Bengali Durga Pujo celebration, each drawing a different slice of the city into a different corner of it. Swiss Park, NewPark Mall, Newark Pavilion, and downtown all function as separate venues for the same underlying pattern: Newark's civic life doesn't happen at one town square. It happens at whichever handful of large properties can hold a crowd, and this fall those properties are unusually busy at the same time.
What This Actually Means for Newark
Put the mall and the calendar together and the thesis gets clearer. Newark isn't losing its center. It's redrawing it around fewer, bigger anchors, a warehouse club instead of a department store, a full-scale grocery chain instead of a mid-tier retailer, a parking lot that hosts a religious festival instead of a strip of vacant storefronts. The same logic shows up in the festival calendar: instead of dozens of small block parties, a handful of large gatherings absorb the community's attention, each one tied to a specific piece of the city's population.
If you live here, none of this changes your commute or your property tax bill. It does change where you'll find yourself parking this September, and it's a reasonable bet that the mall you've watched empty out for years is about to feel busier than it has in a long time, just not for the reasons the old anchor stores would have predicted.
If you're weighing what any of this means for your own plans in Newark, whether that's timing a move around T&T's 2027 opening or just understanding how the neighborhood around Cedar Boulevard is shifting, Moni Shah has spent two decades watching these patterns play out here first. Let's talk — get your home value or start your search.
