BERGEN COUNTY PROPERTY GUIDE

How Bergen County Blue Laws Affect Commercial Property Values

Bergen County is home to some of the highest-value retail real estate in New Jersey. Garden State Plaza, Bergen Town Center, and the Route 17 commercial corridor in Paramus generate retail sales figures that rank among the most productive per square foot in the entire state. And yet Bergen County is also the last county in New Jersey still enforcing Sunday retail restrictions — a set of laws that date to 1704 and prohibit the sale of certain goods categories on Sundays countywide.

For a commercial real estate investor, that combination raises an obvious question: if Blue Laws restrict operating days, what does that do to the income a retail property can actually generate — and by extension, what does it do to value?

The answer is more nuanced than it first appears, and it matters directly for anyone evaluating a Bergen County commercial acquisition, considering selling one, or running a 1031 exchange involving Bergen County retail. This is general property and market information — not legal, financial, or tax advice.

What the Law Restricts, and What It Doesn't

The governing statute is N.J.S.A. 2A:171-5.8. The Sunday sale prohibition applies to a specific list of goods: clothing and wearing apparel, building and lumber supply materials, furniture, home and business furnishings, and household and business appliances. These categories cannot be sold at retail in Bergen County on Sundays.^[1]

The exemption list is long and is where the investor analysis actually starts. Permitted for Sunday sale: restaurants and prepared food, beverages, drugs and pharmaceuticals, dairy and agricultural products, newspapers and publications, gasoline and emergency vehicle repairs, personal hygiene products, health and beauty aids, infant care products, candy, books and magazines, florist supplies, and tobacco. Service businesses — gyms, salons, dry cleaners, medical offices — are not selling goods at all and operate freely on Sundays.

For an investor evaluating a strip center or multi-tenant retail property in Bergen County, the tenant roster breaks cleanly into two categories: tenants whose core business involves restricted goods, and tenants whose core business does not. That distinction is not incidental to property underwriting — it is the underwriting.

How Sunday Restrictions Affect NOI — and What Investors Actually Model

The income a commercial property generates is a function of what tenants pay in rent. Retail rents are typically underwritten based on tenant sales, and tenant sales are a function of operating days. A clothing store that cannot sell on Sundays in Bergen County is generating six days of revenue in a market where its counterpart in Hudson County, Morris County, or Passaic County generates seven.

For a high-volume retailer, Sunday can represent 15–20% of weekly sales depending on the category. That is not a rounding error in a retail tenant's P&L — and it is not a rounding error in the landlord's underwriting when the lease has a percentage rent clause tied to tenant sales volume. A sophisticated investor buying a Bergen County retail center with clothing, furniture, or appliance anchors is buying a property where those tenants structurally cannot reach the same sales ceiling as they would in a neighboring county.

The market has adapted to this in a predictable way: Bergen County's most durable retail corridors are anchored by tenants who are either Sunday-exempt or who have built their Bergen County economics around a six-day operating model. Garden State Plaza, for instance, has a strong food hall and restaurant presence alongside its restricted-goods retail. A center designed around food and service anchors is less exposed to Blue Laws than one designed around clothing and home furnishings anchors. Investors who have built Bergen County retail portfolios over the past two decades have generally learned — sometimes the hard way — to weight tenant mix accordingly.

The Paramus Paradox: Highest-Value Retail in NJ, Partially Restricted

Paramus is the clearest illustration of how Bergen County's retail market has reconciled high commercial values with Sunday restrictions. The municipality is home to Garden State Plaza, Bergen Town Center, and the Route 17 and Route 4 commercial corridors — collectively one of the densest concentrations of retail square footage in the United States, generating among the highest retail sales per square foot in New Jersey.

None of that happens on Sundays for restricted goods categories. On any given Sunday, Paramus's largest clothing stores are closed, its furniture retailers are closed, and its appliance dealers are closed — while its restaurants, pharmacies, grocery anchors, and service tenants operate normally.

What the Paramus market demonstrates is that Blue Laws compress value for restricted-goods retailers without eliminating the overall commercial value of the corridor. The Sunday restriction is a known, priced-in constraint. Retailers who locate in Paramus have made a calculation that the volume generated Monday through Saturday, combined with Bergen County's demographics and the density of the trade area, justifies the Sunday closure. Landlords who own Paramus commercial property have made a corresponding calculation that those tenants will pay market rent despite the operating constraint.

The constraint is real. It is also stable — which is why it has historically been underwritable. An investor buying a Paramus retail center in 2019 knew exactly what the Sunday operating environment looked like, and so did their lender. The uncertainty today is different in character, and that is where the analysis gets more complicated.

Why 2026 Is Different: The American Dream Litigation

Bergen County voters retained the Blue Laws in 1980 and again in 1993 — the second time by a two-to-one countywide margin. For decades, the framework was stable, even if occasionally contested. That stability is now under more serious legal pressure than at any prior point in recent history.

American Dream Mall in East Rutherford has been operating its retail tenants — including clothing and apparel stores, which are a restricted category — on Sundays, claiming that the property's designation as a state development project exempts it from the Sunday restriction. In August 2025, the Borough of Paramus filed suit against the mall, arguing that Sunday retail operations at American Dream violate the same laws that require Garden State Plaza's clothing stores to close on Sundays just a few miles away.^[2] The New Jersey state government has sided with American Dream, arguing that the restriction does not apply to the property.^[3]

The litigation is ongoing as of mid-2026. But the commercial real estate implication is already visible: tenants at American Dream can operate seven days a week and compete directly with Bergen County retailers who cannot. That competitive imbalance has forced the Blue Laws question into active litigation and made the inconsistency in enforcement impossible to ignore.

For a commercial investor, this creates a two-sided scenario worth thinking through explicitly. If the litigation results in Blue Laws being upheld and consistently enforced, the operating environment for Bergen County retail remains as it has been — a known, priced-in constraint, with American Dream brought into compliance like the rest of the county. If the litigation results in broader erosion or formal repeal of the Sunday restriction, Bergen County retail values move — but not uniformly. Properties anchored by currently-restricted tenants (clothing, furniture, appliances) would benefit most directly from a seven-day operating environment. Properties built around Sunday-proof tenants would see the least change. And properties that have been priced at a discount to reflect the Sunday constraint could re-rate upward if that constraint disappears.

What This Means When You're Underwriting a Bergen County Commercial Property

Three variables deserve explicit attention in any Bergen County commercial acquisition where retail tenants are involved.

Tenant category composition. Break the rent roll into Sunday-restricted tenants and Sunday-exempt tenants. For restricted tenants, model the income impact of six operating days rather than seven — both in terms of their sales potential and, if applicable, any percentage rent structures tied to sales. For a center where 70% of GLA is restricted-goods retail, the Blue Laws exposure is material. For a center built around food, service, and health-oriented tenants, it is minimal.

Lease structure for restricted tenants. Percentage rent clauses, operating covenants, and co-tenancy provisions can all be affected by Sunday restrictions in ways that aren't obvious at the headline rent level. A percentage rent clause tied to annual sales has a lower ceiling for a Bergen County clothing tenant than for the same tenant in a county without the restriction. An operating covenant requiring six-day operations means something different than one requiring seven-day operations. These are underwriting details, not legal advice — but they are the kind of details that show up in due diligence on any well-documented commercial acquisition.

The litigation timeline as a hold-period variable. If you are underwriting a Bergen County retail property on a five-to-seven-year hold, the American Dream litigation is a variable that could resolve within that period — in a direction that either reinforces or eliminates the current operating constraint. A conservative underwrite holds the Sunday restriction constant and treats any favorable resolution as upside. An aggressive underwrite prices in partial or full resolution. The current status of the litigation is publicly available through NJ court filings and ongoing reporting from NJ Spotlight News and NJBiz.