Ask anyone who grew up going to the mall on Metropolitan Avenue what to call it and you'll get three different answers depending on their age. The oldest crowd remembers the Robert Hall clothing store that gave the site its original nickname decades ago. Middle-aged shoppers know it as Metro Mall, the name that stuck for most of its life. Right now it's in the middle of becoming something with a third name entirely: The Shops at Rentar Plaza. The rebrand was targeted for completion this spring, and the work is still underway.

The gap between the announced timeline and the current status on Metropolitan Avenue is part of the site's redevelopment story.

What's Actually Open Right Now

Rentar Development Corp., which has owned the 1.5 million square foot complex since it opened in 1972, started construction on October 1, 2024, telling reporters at the time that the overhaul would take about a year. By June 2025, the timeline had shifted. In reporting on the property's $160 million refinancing, Commercial Observer noted the developer's own representative describing a spring 2026 completion for the rebranded retail section. Spring 2026 has come and gone.

Here's what the developer's own site currently lists as open and operating, alongside announced tenants that are not listed as open:

Every business that's actually open today is a holdover from before the renovation began. The new additions are still in the lease-signed, construction-pending stage.

The site has seen multiple tenant changes over time. Kmart, the chain's last Queens location, closed at the end of 2018. Toys "R" Us closed nationally in 2021 after its 2017 bankruptcy filing. Fashion Bug shut its last stores in 2013. Waldbaum's closed in 2015. Most recently, Funtopia USA ended a 24-year run on the mall's upper level in 2024, and the center's dollar store was slated to close around the same time. The current renovation follows those changes, and its completion timeline has shifted.

There's one more piece of this puzzle still sitting on paper rather than pavement. A 2023 proposal for the Interborough Express light rail line includes a station planned next to the existing Middle Village-Metropolitan Avenue subway stop, right by the shopping center's entrance. No construction date has been set. It's one more item queued up around this same stretch of Metropolitan Avenue without a firm answer for when it actually arrives.

Juniper Valley Park and the 2026 Season

Juniper Valley Park has been running on the same schedule it's kept for years.

The park itself dates to 1936, when the WPA first opened a playground on the site, developing it further between 1940 and 1942. Today it's 55.64 acres, and according to NYC Parks, locals still use it to spend time with old friends and neighbors, gathering at the tennis, handball, and basketball courts. The shuffleboard court draws the park's older regulars, and the bocce courts, a legacy of the neighborhood's active Italian community, stay busy.

In May 2026, City Council Member Phil Wong announced the return of the park's Summer Concert Series and Movies Under the Stars program, run in partnership with the Queens Culture & Arts Network and NYC Parks, with music performances also backed by the Juniper Park Civic Association. The season ran through late May and June, bringing outdoor concerts and film screenings back to the park near 80th Street and Juniper Boulevard South, a tradition Wong's announcement described as something that's been happening in the community for years and that he was simply continuing.

The mall's developer set a spring 2026 completion target for the new look, and a new date hasn't been announced. The park's concert series was announced, delivered on schedule, and wrapped exactly when it was supposed to, the same way it has in prior years. A retail buildout follows construction and leasing timelines, and the concert series follows a civic calendar set months ahead.

What to Know About the Renovation

None of this means the Rentar Plaza renovation won't finish or that Catch Air and Burlington won't eventually open their doors. Leases get signed well before construction wraps, and an 18,000 square foot buildout for an indoor play center takes real time. The tennis courts, the bocce games, the shuffleboard matches, and the return of live music under the trees near Juniper Boulevard South happened on schedule this year. The new storefronts a few blocks away have not opened, and the buildout remains underway.

Metropolitan Avenue has absorbed this kind of shift before. Niederstein's, a well-known local restaurant that had operated on Metropolitan Avenue for generations, was demolished in 2005. The Arion Theater, a one-screen, 970-seat cinema built in 1921 at Metropolitan Avenue and 74th Street, closed in the mid-1980s and by 2016 had become a Salvation Army location. Commercial identity along this stretch has never been static. What's happening at the old Metro Mall right now is consistent with that longer pattern, a retail landmark changing hands and names while the neighborhood keeps functioning around it.

For residents keeping an eye on the shopping center's progress, the renovation remains underway and no new completion date has been announced. The businesses that are open today are the same ones that were open before construction started. The announced new tenants have not opened their doors. NYC Parks describes the bocce courts at Juniper Valley Park as busy.

If you're watching Metropolitan Avenue for other reasons, whether it's a future move, a sale, or just curiosity about what a shifting retail corridor means for property values nearby, EverymannsRealEstate.com shares updates about changes in Middle Village.