Green Acres Mall’s redevelopment is bringing a new restaurant and a major hiring effort to Valley Stream. Cheesecake Factory plans to open there Dec. 15, with more than 285 job openings and starting pay of up to $26 an hour. The 8,000-square-foot restaurant will occupy the first floor of the former Kohl’s department store, a two-story building that once anchored a different version of the mall, as reported by Newsday.
Big Hiring Push Ahead of December Debut
According to Newsday, the new location is accepting applications for nearly a dozen types of roles, including restaurant manager, line cooks, servers, bartenders and dishwashers. Starting salaries range from $17 an hour for positions like bussers up to $26 an hour for line cooks, the outlet reported. The opening date itself comes per the restaurant's own website, Newsday noted, since company officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The restaurant is known for its large dining rooms and sprawling menu, a formula that has made it a reliable draw for shopping centers nationwide. Consumers spent $2.7 billion at Cheesecake Factory locations in 2025, and the chain ranks as the 37th largest restaurant chain in the country by sales volume, with more than 200 locations overall. The average location pulls in roughly $12.5 million in annual sales, and chain-wide sales grew more than 1% last year and over 4% in the first half of 2026, Newsday reported at Newsday.
Fifth Long Island Location, Depending on the Count
Newsday reported four existing Cheesecake Factory locations on Long Island: Smith Haven Mall in Lake Grove, South Shore Mall in Bay Shore, Walt Whitman Shops in Huntington and Samanea New York in Westbury. Daily Voice described the Valley Stream restaurant as the fifth Cheesecake Factory on the Island. The chain's own location pages confirm the Lake Grove restaurant sits in the west wing of Smith Haven Mall, while the Westbury branch operates inside Samanea New York.
Part of a Larger Green Acres Makeover
The Cheesecake Factory's arrival is one piece of a much larger overhaul at Green Acres Mall, owned by The Macerich Co., a California-based real estate investment trust. The redevelopment includes plans to tear down the former Sears and Sears Auto Center locations and repurpose the former Kohl's building, according to a release from Macerich. Plans call for an 80,000-square-foot ShopRite along with new restaurants, entertainment options and green space, per a project summary posted by Macerich's press materials.
Estimates of the project's cost and scale vary depending on the source. Macerich-related materials and Newsday have put the redevelopment's cost at between $130 million and $150 million, while Greater Long Island has described it as a roughly $400 million transformation. The square footage figures also vary: Macerich's own release describes an up-to-400,000-square-foot project, while the Long Island Herald has referred to it as a 400,000-square-foot redevelopment.
Other Long Island Malls Have Taken Different Paths
Some other projects have centered on converting enclosed malls into open-air centers. In Holbrook, work to turn the former Sun Vet Mall into the Shops at SunVet began in 2023, and a 43,000-square-foot Whole Foods Market opened there March 5, according to Newsday. In Hicksville, Long Island Business News reported in June 2024 that Broadway Commons’ owners planned to raze the shuttered 300,000-square-foot Macy’s and demolish about 100,000 square feet of mall interior as part of an open-air conversion; those were plans, not completed work. Green Acres’ described redevelopment, by contrast, includes demolishing the former Sears, reusing the former Kohl’s building and adding retail, dining and other uses.
More Fast-Casual Chains on the Way
Other incoming tenants at Green Acres include Long Island's first Panda Express, along with Dave's Hot Chicken and Shake Shack, according to the Macerich press materials. Those additions track a national trend: landlords are devoting more mall square footage to restaurants and bars because they have become a bigger draw for visitors, per a report from NBC News. Yelp data cited in that same report found that restaurants made up 17 of the 25 most popular mall brands based on consumer interest, and the Macerich materials note that the Cheesecake Factory itself topped that same list of 25 brands.
The push toward dining and entertainment comes as traditional mall retail struggles nationally. The U.S. mall vacancy rate was 8.9% at the end of the second quarter of 2025. Landlords across the country are responding by converting enclosed malls into open-air centers, residential developments and other mixed uses, the outlet reported, while suburban mall foot traffic has already climbed back above pre-pandemic levels even as city-center traffic lags, per NBC News.
