On July 8, a small crowd gathered near the food court at The Mall at Wellington Green to watch Arcade Time's marketing director cut a ribbon. Vice Mayor Maria Antuña was there. So were council members Amanda Silvestri and Johnny Meier. Free game passes went out to mark National Video Game Day, and the newly expanded arcade opened its doors at 13,000 square feet, more than double its old second-floor footprint. A month later, a few hundred feet away, Kids Empire held its own grand opening, filling 10,223 square feet near the Grand Court with climbing walls, go-karts and a dedicated dance room for kids' birthday parties.
If you only paid attention to that corner of the mall this summer, you'd think Wellington Green was thriving. And in a real sense, it is. But walk the other direction, past the food court and toward the building that used to house Nordstrom, and you'll find a different story entirely: roughly 120,000 square feet of retail space that has sat mostly empty since April 2019, now the subject of a development application to tear it down and put up apartments.
Both things are happening at the same property, at the same time. That's not a contradiction. It's the actual shape of what's going on at Wellington Green right now, and it's worth understanding as two separate stories rather than one confusing one.
The entertainment side just got serious investment
Arcade Time didn't just move to a bigger room. The relocated venue, positioned directly across from the food court, now includes billiards, a section called Pinball Alley, and a full-service restaurant and bar that wasn't part of the original second-floor location. The chain was recently named the No. 1 arcade in the country in the 41st Bowling Center Architecture and Design Awards, and the Wellington expansion is its flagship-sized bet on that recognition.
Kids Empire, meanwhile, is aimed squarely at families with younger kids. Admission runs $22.90 per child and includes free entry for two accompanying adults, with infants under one admitted free alongside a sibling and a 10 percent discount for active-duty military families. A 10-visit punch card is available for $159. Cyrille Bessiere, the company's CEO, told the Town-Crier that the concept is built around active, social play rather than passive entertainment. Carmen Spinoso, president and CEO of Spinoso Real Estate Group, which manages the mall, called it an addition that brings "a new dynamic to the community."
There's a smaller data point worth noting too. Maha Town, a tenant that had been running as a children's playground, converted its space into a private event venue this summer rather than continuing as a walk-in attraction. That's a third format shift in the same wing of the mall within a few months, which tells you the property's operators are actively testing what draws people in, not just filling vacant leases with whoever signs first.
A vacant department store with a 20-year memory
The Nordstrom story is older and slower moving, but it explains why the other half of the mall looks so different. Nordstrom opened at Wellington Green in 2003, two years after the mall itself debuted, and operated as one of five original anchor stores. It closed in April 2019. A traffic study prepared for the site puts the vacant building at 121,670 square feet, and since closing it has mostly been used for storage and seasonal pop-up shops rather than any real retail tenant.
This isn't the first anchor space to go dark and come back as something unrecognizable. Lord & Taylor closed its Wellington Green store in 2004, and by 2007 that building had been split between City Furniture on the lower level and Ashley Furniture and La-Z-Boy upstairs. La-Z-Boy closed again in 2014, and the space eventually became Paragon Theaters, which opened in February 2017 before being acquired by CMX Cinemas. In other words, half-empty anchor buildings at this particular mall have a track record of eventually becoming something else entirely. The Nordstrom box appears to be next, just aimed at a different use than retail or entertainment.
What Bainbridge is actually proposing
The company behind the Nordstrom redevelopment is Bainbridge Companies, a Wellington-based developer that has built residential communities elsewhere in Florida, including Allure at Abacoa in Jupiter. Its application, filed on March 31 through an entity called Bainbridge Communities Acquisition I LLC, asks the village to amend the mall's master plan to allow 620 multifamily residential units on 18.4 acres, spread across three seven-story buildings with a parking garage. The plan also includes up to 1.5 acres of private recreation space, with a clubhouse, pool and fitness amenities.
Wellington's Planning, Zoning and Building Director Tim Stillings told the Town-Crier that no timeframe has been set for public hearings on the proposal, which is still moving through staff review. "This redevelopment is an investment in the property," Stillings said. Village Manager Jim Barnes described the likely unit mix to WPTV as "one-, two- and three-bedroom units including three towers and a parking structure," framing it as a response to a housing shortage that extends beyond Palm Beach County.
The traffic study attached to the application makes an argument that's easy to miss if you're not reading the fine print: converting the old Nordstrom footprint from retail to housing would actually reduce vehicle trips in and out of the site, an estimated 1,164 fewer daily trips and 158 fewer PM peak-hour trips, though AM peak-hour trips would rise by about 146 as residents commute out in the morning. The study concludes the project meets both county and village traffic standards, even though it notes the nearby intersection of Forest Hill Boulevard and State Road 7 already has background congestion issues unrelated to this specific proposal.
Not everyone is convinced this is the right trade. Richard Meyers, who has lived in Wellington for more than a decade, told WPTV he opposes adding more apartments to the area regardless of the traffic math. That kind of pushback is worth knowing about if you plan to attend a future village meeting on the proposal, since no hearing date had been set as of this summer.
Why this is happening on Forest Hill Boulevard right now
The Nordstrom proposal doesn't exist in isolation. The Town-Crier reported that it comes on the heels of Related Ross receiving approval for a 70-acre project less than a mile from the mall, a large-scale development combining a commercial district, residential areas and a new private school. Add that to the mall's own financial picture: Wellington's planning documents show the property's taxable value fell from $245 million to $74 million as of the village's 2024 assessment, a decline steep enough to explain why ownership has been open to reimagining large chunks of the site.
The mall itself still totals about 1.23 million square feet and originally counted 150 stores anchored by five department stores. Only three of those original anchors, Macy's, Dillard's and JCPenney, remain in place. The property has been under court-appointed receivership, with Spinoso Real Estate Group managing operations on behalf of a Starwood-affiliated ownership group while these larger decisions play out. That context matters because it explains the pattern you're seeing on the ground: aggressive reinvestment in the parts of the mall that are working, and a serious housing pitch for the part that hasn't worked in years.
Two malls, one address
None of this means Wellington Green is disappearing. If anything, the entertainment wing just had its best few months in recent memory, with two major family attractions opening within weeks of each other and a smaller tenant reinventing itself rather than closing. But the Nordstrom side of the property is on a genuinely different track, one that trades retail square footage for apartment units, pending a village review process that hasn't even scheduled its first public hearing yet.
If you live nearby, the practical takeaway is simple: the mall you'll walk into this fall for an arcade night or a kid's birthday party is not the same property, structurally, as the one still working through a zoning application on its far end. Both are real. Neither cancels the other out.
Breakers West Properties keeps a close eye on this stretch of Forest Hill Boulevard because it sits so close to home. If you're curious how any of this fits into the broader picture of what's changing around Wellington, Breakers West Properties is always happy to talk through it.
