The Monmouth Mall opened in 1960 as a 600,000-square-foot open air center. Following a groundbreaking ceremony May 9, Kushner aims to turn the property “inside out.”

The more than $500 million effort will create Monmouth Square, a proposed “town center” for Eatontown. The emerging campus will include 900,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, 1,000 housing units, medical office space, a public green, a Whole Foods Market, and more.

And while many walls will come down – bye-bye, JCPenney and Lord & Taylor – not everyone is leaving the property.

“This is an exciting day,” Eatontown Mayor Anthony Talerico Jr. said at the event. “Just 20 minutes ago, Mr. Boscov called my mother. I have so many exciting things to tell you, but nothing’s more exciting than my mother’s hero calling her, saying that he’s going nowhere.”

Talerico described the work as representative of a “fundamental change” in the town’s landscape.

“We can’t deny the fact that the landscape is changing and we should change with it,” he said. “The reduction of retail space, the increase in residential and the reversions to an open air market is radical, and I get it, but I suspect it’s no more radical than when these farmlands were converted to a shopping center. Things change. And in order for Eatontown to change with the times and remain economically vibrant … you must change with it.”

Click here to read more about the groundbreaking ceremony. And click through our slideshow below to take a look at the changes: