Roughly 40 U.S. malls close in an average year. Cross County Center is building 58,000 square feet of new retail, and it was nearly fully leased before anyone turned dirt.
Project Scope
Two buildings on the north lot of the 1.15-million-square-foot Yonkers center. Building A is single-story at 14,000 square feet. Building B is two stories at 44,000 square feet, planned as a super-flagship for a national apparel retailer that hasn’t been named. Underground parking sits below. A four-acre park anchors the whole thing — tree allée, boardwalk, café seating and flex space sized for farmers markets and the center’s SummerFest.
Marx Realty, a division of Merchants’ National Properties, is the developer and owner. TPG Architecture is the architect of record, Dirtworks Landscape Architecture did the landscape, and GTL Construction is building it. Infrastructure work started in February 2026 with a formal groundbreaking on May 29. Opening is targeted for 2027.
Marx has not released a project cost, and no public subsidy has been announced.
Why It Matters
Cross County opened in 1954 as the first open-air shopping center in the country, with 30 stores. It now runs 100-plus tenants and about 14 million visitors a year. This is the first ground-up retail expansion there since the 2015 restaurant buildings and the 2023 Target redevelopment.
The leasing sequence is the story. Both buildings were spoken for by May 2026, before groundbreaking, which is how retail construction penciled in 1998 and rarely does now. Preleasing at that level takes the entitlement and construction risk off the table for the lender and lets the developer build to a known tenant fit-out rather than a white-box guess.
The four-acre park is doing work beyond amenity. Marx is treating it as the center’s new front door, which reframes a 1950s open-air layout as a public realm rather than a parking field with stores around it. Whether that’s enough to keep drawing 14 million visits a year is the bet.
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Project Team & Details
| Developer | Marx Realty (a division of Merchants' National Properties) |
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| Owner / Client | Marx Realty / Merchants' National Properties |
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| Architect | TPG Architecture |
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| Consultants | Dirtworks Landscape Architecture (Landscape) |
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| General Contractor | GTL Construction |
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| Status | Under Construction |
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| Funding Source | Private |
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