The Mid Island Shopping Plaza held its Grand Opening on October 25, 1956 on the site of a former boys orphanage and a dairy and vegetable farm operated by the Catholic Church. It cost $40,000,000 to construct and was built to accommodate more than 40,000 shoppers daily. It opened just as the population of Nassau County, Long Island surged and the area became a major suburban population center. On September 28, 1960, Vice President Richard Nixon, then running for President, made a stop at the Mid Island Shopping Plaza, where he gave a campaign speech. The first addition to the shopping center came in the way of the Fox Plaza North and South Cinerama, which was built as a freestanding structure at the north end of the mall. One of America's earliest "shopping mall" twin-plex theaters, it showed its first feature in May 1964. The shopping center was enclosed in 1968, renamed Broadway Mall in 1989, renovated between 1987 and 1991, and completely redeveloped in 1995. Allied Stores planned the center and Gertz, a department store based in Jamaica, Queens, built a five-level store to anchor the facility. The Gertz store was reported to be the tallest suburban department store ever built. In the early 1980s, Gertz closed their Jamaica store, making this location its new flagship store, and the Gertz corporate staff was relocated to the fifth floor of the Broadway Mall location. In mid 1982, Allied merged its Gertz division into its Paramus, New Jersey-based Stern's division. All former Gertz locations were re-branded as Stern's in early 1983, and a regional corporate staff remained at the Broadway Mall store. The store was then rebranded as Macy's in 2001 when Federated Department Stores folded their Stern's Division. In 1991, IKEA opened their second store in the New York Metropolitan Areaat the mall. Until 2003, the store was not connected to the mall. IKEA did, however, maintain a display in the center court where its mall entrance would eventually be. It is currently one of the only IKEA stores that is connected to a mall and has a mall entrance. In 2005, Vornado Realty Trust purchased Broadway Mall, adding it to their portfolio of shopping centers across the country. Vornado later sold the mall to a partnership led by KKR in 2014 as part of a plan to shelve its regional mall holdings. On May 5, 2015, renderings surfaced on the homepage of the mall's website that appear to depict a planned renovation. The renovation of the main mall was completed, while the renovation of the food court is ongoing. In 2017, the mall's named was changed from Broadway Mall to Broadway Commons. On January 8, 2020, it was announced that Macy's would be closing as part of a plan to close 125 stores nationwide. The store closed on March 17, 2020.
