Drive along Sunrise Highway through Massapequa and the old mall is still there, mostly empty, its parking lot big enough to land a small plane in. For more than fifty years that building was where you bought your school clothes, dropped a quarter in an arcade machine, and fed the koi in the ornamental pond by the food court. Somewhere along the way, more than 50 of those koi got a new home when the mall's owners started clearing the place out. The building itself is still standing. What almost nobody in Massapequa has straight is what's actually happening to it.
Ask three neighbors and you'll get three different answers. Amazon is building a warehouse there. Amazon already bought the whole thing. Nothing is really happening, it's just rumors again like it's been for years. Here's what the public record actually says, and it's smaller and slower than most of the talk around town.
A Third of 77 Acres, Not the Whole Site
The Sunrise Mall sits on roughly 77 acres in East Massapequa, and what's currently under contract covers 26.7 of them, a little over a third of the property. That's the piece a site plan filed with the Town of Oyster Bay's Planning and Development Department proposes for a 150,348-square-foot Amazon warehouse and delivery station, along with a vehicle fleet service building, running 24 hours a day.
The sale itself showed up in Urban Edge Properties' first-quarter 2026 securities filing: the real estate investment trust that owns the mall disclosed it was under contract to sell that parcel for $79.5 million. The filing didn't name the buyer, but Urban Edge officials had already said in February that they were finalizing a deal to sell about a third of the site to Amazon for a distribution center. On the company's first-quarter earnings call, CEO Jeffrey Olson put it plainly: "The entitlement process is advancing on schedule." His COO, Jeffrey Mooallem, added that Dick's Sporting Goods, the mall's last remaining tenant, was handing back its keys that week, which he said would let Urban Edge "advance our plans rapidly into later this year."
None of that means shovels are in the ground. A source in the town told local reporters back in March that no construction is expected before 2027, because the plan still needs a full environmental review, a building plan evaluation, and public hearings. If approved, the town's own estimate puts construction at about 13 months, and the project is projected to bring 75 to 100 warehouse jobs and up to 305 driver positions once it's operating.
Here's the confirmed picture next to what's still open, side by side:
| Confirmed | Still undecided |
|---|---|
| 26.7 of 77 acres under contract, $79.5 million sale price | What happens to the remaining roughly 50 acres |
| Proposed use: 150,348-sq-ft Amazon warehouse and delivery station, 24/7 | Whether that land becomes retail, something else, or sits vacant longer |
| 75 to 100 warehouse jobs, up to 305 driver positions projected | A confirmed construction start date, since town review is ongoing |
| No construction expected before 2027 | Whether Amazon meets directly with local officials, which hasn't happened yet |
Why the Other Fifty Acres Doesn't Have a Plan Yet
That leftover parcel, roughly 50 acres, is where most of the mall's actual retail history sat. It's where Macy's, JCPenney, E.J. Korvette, and Gertz ran department stores when the mall opened on August 30, 1973, as the first two-level shopping mall on Long Island. Macy's held on the longest of the big anchors, finally closing its doors in March 2025. Dick's Sporting Goods outlasted everyone else, and its closure in early May 2026 is what pushed the Amazon talk back into the local news cycle.
But the fate of that other two-thirds of the property has, as of this reporting, not been determined. There's no filed plan for it, no proposed tenant, no timeline. The Amazon deal answers what happens to one slice of Sunrise Mall. It doesn't answer what happens to the mall.
A quick timeline of how the building got here:
- March to July 2020: the mall closes temporarily during the COVID shutdown
- February 2022: management stops renewing tenant leases
- March 2025: Macy's, the last major department store anchor, closes
- Early May 2026: Dick's Sporting Goods, the final tenant, hands back the keys
What the Neighbors Are Actually Saying
Reaction along Sunrise Highway has been mixed, and it splits pretty cleanly along who's counting on foot traffic and who's counting on quiet. Town Councilwoman Laura Maier, who owns a nearby Dairy Queen and Jersey Mike's, called the redevelopment "encouraging news," pointing to how much the mall's decline had already cost businesses that depend on steady customer flow. A pizzeria owner near the site said Amazon workers filling the area could be good for business too.
Robin Hepworth, president of the Chamber of Commerce of the Massapequas, has taken a more measured line: "Our role is to support our business community while also advocating for responsible development." Massapequa Park Mayor Dan Pearl said he's asked for a meeting with Amazon representatives and hasn't gotten one yet, though he's noted a warehouse might beat a mall that just sits empty.
Not everyone is thinking about foot traffic. Carmela Hahl, who lives on Westwood Road and has been in the area for three decades, put her concern this way: "I have lived in this town for 30 years and this is a quality-of-life issue." And for longtime residents like Pete Anglin, the discussion isn't really about zoning at all. In a Facebook post that got passed around locally, he wrote, "As I drive past the old Sunrise Mall, I can't forget the memories," recalling trips to JCPenney and Korvette's with his mother, lunch at the Woolworth's counter with his grandmother, and afternoons at the arcade and Farrell's Ice Cream.
Sizing It Up Against the Rest of Long Island
It helps to know where this fits on Amazon's broader map of Long Island. The same company has also filed plans for a much bigger project in Holbrook, a $1 billion, 4.2 million-square-foot fulfillment complex on 140 acres of woodland near Sunrise Highway and Beacon Drive, east of MacArthur Airport. That Holbrook proposal alone would be roughly 28 times the size of the building proposed for the Sunrise Mall site. The Massapequa project isn't the anchor of some regional logistics push. It's one distribution facility on one third of one shuttered mall, still working its way through a town planning process that hasn't set a construction date.
If you've been hearing that Sunrise Mall is "becoming an Amazon warehouse," that's true for about a third of the property, and only once the town finishes its review. If you've been hearing nothing is happening, that's not accurate either. A sale is under contract, the money is real, and the entitlement process is moving. What's genuinely still unwritten is the rest of the site, the acres where a generation of Massapequa kids actually shopped, ate, and hung out after school. That part of the story hasn't been decided by anyone yet, including Urban Edge.
We'll keep watching this one as the town's review moves forward, because a shift this size on Sunrise Highway changes commute patterns, foot traffic for neighboring businesses, and the daily texture of that stretch of Massapequa no matter how the second half of the site eventually gets used.
If you're weighing a move near this corridor, or you're already local and curious what a project like this could mean down the road for your own street, Christine Biordi has been raising her family in Massapequa long enough to talk through what local development actually means for a specific block, not just the headline. Reach out anytime, or start with a free home valuation to see where your property stands today.
