Drive the stretch of MacArthur Road where it crosses Grape Street on any weekday afternoon and you will pass at least four storefronts wrapped in construction paper, a delivery truck backed up to a loading dock that has not seen regular traffic in years, and a permit notice taped inside a window that used to sell picture frames and yarn. If you have lived in Whitehall Township for a while, you already know which stores used to be there. What you may not know is that the empty spaces are not filling back in on one schedule. They are filling in on three, and only one of them has a date you can circle on your calendar right now.
One Purchase Behind Every Empty Storefront
The plaza most people still call Whitehall Mall out of habit has a new owner. Miami-based Mishorim Gold Properties bought the more than 400,000-square-foot center this spring, taking it over from Washington Prime Group, which had watched a string of tenants come and go over the past several years. Shoe Carnival left. Lane Bryant left. Five Below left too, though that one is easy to track: the chain simply relocated a few minutes away to Whitehall's MacArthur Commons shopping center in February.
The bigger story is what those departures left behind. Bed Bath & Beyond, buy buy Baby and Michaels all once anchored large sections of the plaza. Michaels moved out first, crossing Grape Street to the Lehigh Valley Mall back in 2020, and its old space spent the years since hosting seasonal tenants like Spirit Halloween and Spirit Christmas rather than a permanent occupant. That is the kind of detail that tells you a space has been treated as a placeholder, not a destination, for half a decade.
Under Mishorim Gold, more than 100,000 square feet of that placeholder space is now under contract. That is the number that matters here. It is not a facelift. It is close to a quarter of the entire center changing hands at once.
What's Actually Landing, And When
Here is the roster as it stands, pulled from what has been confirmed publicly so far:
| Business | Former Space | Size | Expected Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forman Mills | Bed Bath & Beyond | 43,971 sq ft | Opens 9 a.m., September 24, 2026 |
| Ziyad Market | Five Below | 7,200 sq ft | By end of 2026 |
| Lululand Adventure Park | buy buy Baby + Michaels/Spirit space, combined | 53,000+ sq ft | Reported target of March 2027 |
Three tenants, three timelines, one landlord. That spread is the part worth paying attention to if you are trying to figure out when the plaza will actually feel different to walk through.
The Countdown Already Started
Forman Mills, an off-price retailer, is the fastest mover on the list, and it is close enough now that the date is not a projection anymore. The store takes over the old Bed Bath & Beyond box at just under 44,000 square feet and opens its doors at 9 a.m. on September 24. That is under two weeks from today. If you have been wondering why the largest wrapped storefront on that side of the plaza suddenly has delivery trucks parked outside it, this is why.
Ziyad Market is close behind, though less precisely dated. The international grocer is taking the smaller former Five Below space, a little over 7,000 square feet, and is expected to open before the year is out.
The One That Won't Be Ready By Halloween
Lululand Adventure Park is the outlier, and its timeline explains something about how these projects actually get built. The company is combining two separate former units, the old buy buy Baby space and the space that housed Michaels and later the seasonal Spirit stores, into one contiguous footprint of more than 53,000 square feet. That is a bigger construction job than converting a single big-box shell, and it shows in the schedule. Trade press covering the deal reported the Whitehall location's target opening as March 2027, roughly six months from now.
This will be the company's Pennsylvania debut, joining existing locations in Virginia and Florida. The chief operating officer of the company told a regional retail outlet the landlord reached out directly about expanding into Whitehall, calling it a chance to "be a part of the Whitehall family." Whatever the marketing language, the practical takeaway for a nearby resident is simpler: this space is going to sit under construction wrap through the winter and likely into next spring, even as its neighbors on either side reopen for business this fall.
A Few Doors Already Reopened
It is worth separating the coming-soon list from what has already landed, because three tenants have opened in the plaza over the past few years and are already part of daily life here, not future plans. Floor & Decor, the specialty flooring retailer, arrived in 2023. The Gravity Vault, an indoor rock climbing gym, opened in 2025. And Wawa added a location this year. None of those are news anymore, but they are the proof that this turnaround did not start with Mishorim Gold. It started earlier and picked up speed once the new owner took over.
MacArthur Road Runs On Its Own Clock
None of this has much to do with what is happening a few blocks down MacArthur Road, where the restaurant scene has been turning over on a completely different rhythm, driven by small operators and lease cycles rather than a single ownership change.
At 1146 MacArthur Road, a second location of Al Azeez Grill opened this spring in the space that used to hold Griddle 145, a breakfast-and-lunch spot that had run for 13 years before closing at the end of last December. The new restaurant serves Pakistani, Indian, Afghani and Middle Eastern fusion food, and it is the second location for its owners, who already run a similar spot elsewhere in the region.
At 1410 Grape Street, Thirsty Turtle Tavern took over the site of the former Keystone Pub & Grill, which had operated there for 12 years before that, and a Lone Star Steakhouse before that. The tavern opened last year with a renovated interior, a new lounge area, and dozens of televisions built for sports viewing.
And at 1162 MacArthur Road, the address tells its own story of churn. A building that once housed the Lehigh Valley Diner has cycled through Salt & Pepper Family Restaurant, Mayuri Indian Cuisine and Jordan Parkway Diner over roughly 15 years. Its current occupant, Maraschino Diner, opened under owners Juanita and Cesar Mejia, who had worked at other Lehigh Valley diners for two decades before opening their own place with almost 100 seats.
That address has turned over restaurant concepts about as often as the plaza has turned over anchor tenants in the same stretch of years, but for a different reason. The plaza's vacancies trace back to national retail chains restructuring and a single ownership change. The diner space traces back to smaller operators testing a concept, closing, and handing the keys to the next one. Two storefronts a few hundred feet apart, two entirely different explanations for why the sign out front keeps changing.
One Date Worth Circling
If you want a reason to walk the plaza corridor before winter sets in, Whitehall Township has one on the books. The township is hosting a fall community event on Sunday, September 27, at Whitehall Parkway, 4689 South Church Street. A DJ runs from 2 to 4 p.m., followed by live music from The Castaway Band from 4 to 7 p.m., with food and beverage trucks and local vendors on site. Admission is free.
It lands three days after Forman Mills opens its doors, which makes for a reasonable weekend if you are the kind of resident who likes to see a new store on its first weekend and a township event on the next. Neither one waits on the other. That is more or less the theme of this whole stretch of road right now: several things opening close together in time, for reasons that have nothing to do with each other.
What This Means If You Live Here
The honest read on Whitehall Plaza right now is that it is not one project. It is Mishorim Gold's lease-up running on its own construction timeline, layered on top of a restaurant corridor that turns over independently, both happening to hit visible milestones in the same few months. Knowing which clock you are looking at, the landlord's build-out schedule or the restaurant lease cycle, tells you whether to expect a finished storefront next week or next spring.
We track this kind of local change closely because it shapes what it actually feels like to live somewhere day to day, long before it shows up in any market report. If you are curious what a changing corridor like this means for property values in your specific part of Lehigh County, or you are thinking about what your home is worth in a market that is visibly reinvesting in itself, Witt Real Estate Group is glad to walk through it with you. Get Your Free Home Valuation and we will give you a straight answer, grounded in what is actually happening on the ground here, not a generic estimate.
