Vishal Patel had a simple reason for moving Tacoria off Route 17 after five years. "If you miss the exit, it's like a 10-minute trip to get back," the co-founder told NJBIZ when his Mexican street food chain relocated its Paramus location from Paramus Crossroads to a storefront inside Bergen Town Center in October 2025. That single sentence explains more about what's happening in this borough right now than any press release about new stores.
Tacoria didn't leave because business was bad. The Rutgers-alumni-founded chain had a five-year run at its Route 17 spot and has gone on to open locations in Cherry Hill, Edgewater, Hoboken, Jersey City, Marlton, Montclair, Morristown, Piscataway, Ridgewood and Princeton. It left because a highway strip with a missable exit ramp is a worse bet than a mall entrance you can walk to from the parking lot you already used for groceries. That calculation, repeated by lease after lease this year, is quietly turning Bergen Town Center from a place you drive to for a specific errand into a place you're already at.
The Six Signed Leases That Aren't About Shopping Trips
In April 2026, Urban Edge Properties, which owns the roughly 900,000-square-foot center anchored by Whole Foods, Target and CVS, announced six new tenants. None of them are the kind of stores that used to define a Bergen County mall visit.
| Tenant | Category | Size |
|---|---|---|
| Elev8tion Fitness | Gym, expanding from South Florida | 14,750 sq ft |
| Tatte Bakery & Cafe | Boston-based bakery cafe | 3,840 sq ft |
| Nail Art Spa | Second location, out of Hackensack | 2,211 sq ft |
| Pilates Addiction | Pilates studio | 1,696 sq ft |
| Canton Rodeo | Flagship Hong Kong BBQ concept | 1,458 sq ft |
| Swarovski | Crystal jewelry | 869 sq ft |
Look at what's missing from that list. There's no department store, no big-box anchor, nothing designed for a once-a-season shopping trip. A 14,750-square-foot gym and a Pilates studio are businesses that only work if the same people show up two or three times a week. A bakery cafe and a nail salon's second location are bets on repeat, routine customers, not destination visits. Urban Edge's own language for the property, describing it as a place for "Everyone's Everyday," isn't marketing filler. It's a description of the leasing strategy.
This is the same logic Tacoria's move already demonstrated. The businesses signing leases here in 2026 aren't trying to give Paramus residents a reason to drive somewhere special. They're trying to become the thing residents were already doing, just moved fifty feet closer to the Whole Foods checkout line.
Two Restaurants Still Betting on Occasion, Not Routine
Not every new arrival fits that pattern, and the contrast is instructive. Tommy's Tavern & Tap, the Jersey Shore-born chain, has signed on for its first Bergen County location at the center, a 10,000-square-foot outpost on a pad site next to the Olive Garden. Reported timelines for the opening have shifted between announcements, so the safer read is simply that it's coming, not exactly when. Celebrity chef Josh Capon is bringing Capon's Burgers to a mall storefront in 2026 too, his second Capon's Burgers concept after the original at Fontainebleau Las Vegas and his first New Jersey venture, Capon's Chophouse, which opened at The Shops at Riverside in October 2025.
Both of these are still occasion dining. A tavern with a full bar and a celebrity chef's burger concept aren't errand-list businesses the way a Pilates studio is. But even these two chose to attach themselves to the retail center's foot traffic rather than stand alone on a restaurant row, which tells you the center's gravitational pull now extends to businesses that don't strictly need it. Ten years ago, a restaurant chasing Bergen County name recognition might have picked a standalone lot on Route 17. In 2026, it's picking a pad site next to Olive Garden inside a shopping center that already draws more than 11 million visits a year.
The Zoo Boo Clock Nobody Sets Early Enough
The same discipline that's reshaping Bergen Town Center's leasing calendar governs the borough's biggest recurring fall tradition, and residents who miss the window lose out the same way a driver misses an exit.
Zoo Boo, the Halloween event at the Bergen County Zoo inside Van Saun County Park at 216 Forest Avenue, runs on a strict two-stage ticket release every year. Members of the Friends of the Bergen County Zoo get presale access first, and general admission for everyone else has opened October 1 in past years, sold through Eventbrite. Last year's event ran from Friday, October 17 through Sunday, October 19, with a friendly day train for younger kids and an "Eerie Express" night train where costumed actors work the haunted route. Trick-or-treating happens inside the zoo itself, alongside magic shows and ghost story sessions. Advance purchase is required for every guest age 2 and up, and the event has a track record of selling out before residents who wait for word of mouth get a chance.
That's not a coincidence of scheduling. It's the same principle at work across the entire borough this fall: the people who benefit are the ones tracking specific dates, not the ones waiting to hear about something after it's already happened. A gym lease signed in April doesn't wait for August foot traffic to validate it. A Zoo Boo ticket window doesn't wait for October 15 to open up. Both calendars reward whoever checks first.
The Rule Both Calendars Follow
Paramus in 2026 isn't becoming a more exciting place to visit occasionally. It's becoming a place where the routine stuff, the gym session, the coffee run, the Halloween weekend with the kids, all happen closer together and on a tighter clock than they used to. Bergen Town Center's shift from Route 17 refugees like Tacoria to fitness studios and bakery cafes isn't really about retail. It's about what a shopping center becomes when it stops competing for occasional trips and starts competing for the small, repeated decisions that make up an actual week.
Residents who've lived here longer than the last leasing cycle will recognize the pattern even if they haven't put a name to it. The neighborhood rewards people who know when the general public ticket window opens and which April announcement quietly changed what's walkable from their usual parking spot. That's a different kind of local knowledge than a map of what's nearby. It's a sense for when things happen, not just where.
If you're weighing what a neighborhood like this is actually worth, beyond what's listed on a portal, that's the kind of read that only comes from paying attention over time. The Tony Nabhan Collective works Northern Bergen County closely enough to know which leasing announcements matter and which Halloween ticket window actually sells out. If you're thinking about what your Paramus home is worth in a market shaped by these same small, compounding shifts, request your free home valuation and get a read grounded in what's actually happening here, not a generic estimate pulled from a database.
