What Actually Opened in Journal Square This Year, and What Quietly Didn't

Walk out of the Journal Square PATH station this August and the first thing you'll probably notice is the Target. It wasn't there a year ago. Cross the plaza and you'll pass Boulevard Drinks, the hot dog stand that's been serving the same corner since 1937, still standing in a spot it may not get to keep. Somewhere behind the scaffolding, the Loew's Jersey Theatre is finishing a $130 million facelift that's been "almost done" for longer than some residents have lived here.

Journal Square has spent a decade being described in the future tense. This year, some of that future actually arrived. Some of it died. And the part of the neighborhood that's proven hardest to kill is the part nobody built on purpose.

The Corner That Finally Opened

For years, the biggest visible construction site at Journal Square was the twin-tower complex now known as The Journal, developed by Kushner Companies on a parcel next to the PATH station that had sat vacant since 2009. The retail anchor for that project, a 40,000-square-foot Target with a Starbucks and CVS Pharmacy inside, opened to shoppers in mid-March 2026 and hired close to 100 workers to run it.

What matters more than the store itself is what came with it. The plaza in front of the building, facing JFK Boulevard, is opening in phases, turning what used to be a taxi stand into actual green space with seating. It's a smaller, quieter version of Magnolia Landing, the plaza that Journal Squared (a separate high-rise complex a few blocks over, built by Kushner Real Estate Group) delivered on the Summit Avenue side of the PATH station in an earlier phase. Two different Kushner-affiliated developers, two different plazas, arriving years apart. If you've found yourself confused about which "Kushner tower" people are talking about at a given moment, that's not a failure of attention. The names are genuinely close enough to cause it.

Here's a snapshot of where things actually stand, not where the renderings say they'll stand:

Wonder Bagels, which already runs seven locations across Jersey City and Bayonne, signed a lease for 2,100 square feet on the ground floor of 626 Newark Avenue, a high-rise that finished construction a few blocks from the PATH station. No opening date has been set. If the pattern with Target holds, expect the signage to go up months before the doors do.

The Theater That Keeps Almost Reopening

The Loew's Jersey Theatre has been "reopening soon" for long enough that it's become a running joke among people who've lived here a while. Some context on why it's taken this long: the building opened in 1929 as one of five original Loew's "Wonder Theatres" in the New York area, the only one built outside the city itself, and it closed in 1986 after years of decline. Jersey City bought it in 1993. It limped along with partial reopenings and community screenings for years before Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment signed on in 2021 to run a full restoration, the same organization that programs Newark's Prudential Center. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2022.

The restoration itself has run $130 million and is rebuilding the theater to hold a flexible 2,600 to 4,000 people, with plans for around 150 events a year once it's fully open. HBSE brought on Bruce Wheeler as general manager, a guy who's spent his career touring acts like Cage the Elephant and Jimmy Fallon. Talking to PIX11 about walking patrons through the restored grand lobby, Wheeler said he hopes the craftsmanship will be "a wow moment for them."

What's different this year, compared to the last few years of "coming soon," is that tickets are actually on sale. A handful of shows are booked for this fall and winter even though the building hasn't formally reopened yet. That's a real signal. Renderings don't sell tickets. Box offices do. If you want to see what's actually booked, NJArts.net has been tracking the announcement closely, and the theater's own site keeps the current calendar.

The Museum That Isn't Coming

Not every long-promised project made it. Back in 2018, Jersey City floated the idea of bringing a satellite of the Centre Pompidou, the Paris museum, to Journal Square. The city bought a building at 25 Journal Square Plaza for the purpose. It was, for a while, the project meant to give the neighborhood a cultural identity to match its new skyline.

It never happened. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority pulled its financial support in 2024. A fall 2025 pitch to turn the space into a hotel and food hall went nowhere. Then Mayor Fulop's term ended, and incoming Mayor James Solomon took the project in a different direction entirely. In February 2026, his office announced a partnership with Kushner Real Estate Group to convert the site into affordable housing instead of a museum.

There's something worth sitting with in that swap. The plan that was supposed to make Journal Square feel like a cultural destination got replaced by a plan to make it easier to actually live there. Whether that's a downgrade or a correction probably depends on whether you were hoping to visit a museum or hoping to find an apartment.

The Business That's Older Than Any of It

Everything above involves institutions with press releases, architects, and financing structures. Boulevard Drinks has none of that. It's been serving hot dogs, birch beer, and coffee from the same spot at 48 Journal Square Plaza since 1937, run for years by owner Victor Victoratos. It has a lease that runs through 2034.

That lease hasn't been enough. Plans tied to redevelopment at the site include a 25,000-square-foot Whole Foods on the ground floor, and Victoratos says the landlord notified him he'd need to vacate by May 31, 2026, telling Hoboken Girl he suspects the building changed hands without the new owner honoring the lease term. As of early June 2026, the most recent update available, Boulevard Drinks was still open and still fighting to stay.

It's an odd kind of continuity. The building that survived the Loew's Theatre's forty years of disrepair, survived the neighborhood's long stretch of being written off, survived the Pompidou hype cycle from announcement to quiet death, might not survive the thing that was actually supposed to be good news: a grocery store moving in.

What This Actually Means If You're Walking Through Here This Fall

A few things worth knowing if you live near the Square right now:

1. Target is open daily with the Starbucks and CVS already running inside, so the morning coffee run doesn't require a PATH ride anymore.
2. Loew's Jersey Theatre tickets are already being sold for select fall and winter dates, even ahead of the formal reopening, so it's worth checking the calendar before assuming the theater is still just scaffolding.
3. Wonder Bagels has a lease at 626 Newark Avenue but no confirmed open date, so don't plan a bagel run around it just yet.
4. Boulevard Drinks was still serving hot dogs at 48 Journal Square Plaza as of early June 2026, the most recent update available. If you've been meaning to try it, that "eventually" window may be shorter than it looks.
5. The plaza fronting The Journal on JFK Boulevard is walkable now in sections, a real shortcut if you're cutting through on your way to the station.

The version of Journal Square you'll walk through this fall isn't the finished neighborhood the renderings promised a few years back, and it isn't the neighborhood some residents still remember from before the cranes showed up. It's something in between: retail and transit infrastructure that arrived roughly on schedule, a cultural anchor that got scrapped and replaced with housing, a historic theater that's still catching up to its own hype, and a hot dog stand carrying more institutional memory than any of the towers around it.

If you're curious how any of this shows up in what a home or a rental actually costs to hold near Journal Square, or you're weighing whether now's the moment to buy, sell, or just understand your options in Hudson County, Amy DeAngelo Real Estate can walk you through what the neighborhood's changes mean for you specifically. Reach out anytime for a free home valuation or just to talk through what you're seeing on your own block.