A major sports retailer will be bringing their expanded recreational brand to Jersey City as Dick’s House of Sport is officially coming to the Newport Centre Mall.
Signage has gone up at the former home of Sears at 30 Mall Drive, Jersey City. The once-omnipresent brand announced last year that their two-floor location inside Newport Centre was shuttering, marking the company’s official exit from the Garden State.
Dick’s Sporting Goods is the biggest sports equipment retailer in the country and their House of Sport stores have grown in recent years. The brand opened nine stores last year and most of their locations are sprawling, totaling over 100,000 square feet in size.
Dick’s House of Sport locations include features like climbing walls, golf bays and multi-sport cages. Simon Property Group, the company that owns Newport Centre Mall, has the store listed on their official website and says the Jersey City outpost of Dick’s House of Sport is slated to open on the second floor of the property next year.
The imminent arrival of Dick’s House of Sport throws a monkey wrench into previously reported plans for a Dave & Buster’s inside the space. A Jersey Journal article from earlier this year said that a “source with knowledge of the plan” claimed that a Dave & Buster’s was planned for a portion of the Sears space.
However, it appears that arrangement is no longer in the cards. The first floor of the former Sears space will indeed be home to a Primark store, per our reporting from last summer. Construction has already begun at that storefront and at the future outpost of Dick’s, leaving no room for Dave & Buster’s at the Sears space.
Dave & Buster’s does not appear to have ever made a liquor license transfer application at the Jersey City property, which would be a requirement for opening in Newport Centre. The only large vacant space available at the property would be the former Kings of Kobe storefront on the first floor, which probably isn’t suitable in terms of the total square footage.
Regardless of the Dave & Buster’s plan falling through, Jersey City residents can look forward to local outposts of both Dick’s House of Sport and Primark opening sometime in early 2025.
