Westfield Garden State Plaza

Westfield Garden State Plaza is a two-story, upscale shopping mall located in Paramus, New Jersey, owned and managed by the Westfield Corporation, and located at the intersection of Route 4 and Route 17 near the Garden State Parkway, about 15 miles west of Manhattan. With 2,118,718 sq ft (196,835.3 m²) of leasable space, and housing over 300 stores, it is the largest mall in New Jersey, the third-largest mall in the New York metropolitan area, and one of the highest-revenue producing malls in the United States. Its department store anchors are J.C. Penney, Lord & Taylor, Macy's, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom. It was the first large scale shopping mall in New Jersey.

The mall had sales of $775 per square foot in 2013, about $320 above the national average; Garden State Plaza is one of the most profitable malls in the country.

History

Garden State Plaza was built in 1957 by the Muscarelle Construction Company for owner/developer R.H. Macy & Co. as an open-air shopping "plaza".

Garden State

Garden State is the official nickname of the state of New Jersey in the United States.

Other meanings include:

Garden State (film)

Garden State is a 2004 American romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Zach Braff and starring Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Ian Holm and Braff himself. The film centers on Andrew Largeman (Braff), a 26-year-old actor/waiter who returns to his hometown in New Jersey after his mother dies. Braff based the film on his real life experiences. It was filmed in April and May 2003 and released on July 28, 2004. New Jersey was the main setting and primary shooting location.Garden State received positive reviews upon its release and has garnered a cult following. It was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival. The film also spawned a soundtrack for which Braff, who picked the music himself, won a Grammy Award.

Plot

Struggling actor Andrew Largeman (Braff) wakes up from a dream—in which he apathetically sits on a crashing plane—to a telephone message from his father (Holm), telling Andrew that he needs to return home because his mother has died.

Andrew leaves Los Angeles and returns home to New Jersey to attend the funeral. He recognizes the grave-diggers as old friends Mark (Sarsgaard) and Dave (Alex Burns), who invite him to a party that night. At home, his father gets Andrew a doctor's appointment for headaches he's been having.

Garden State (soundtrack)

Garden State is the soundtrack album to the film Garden State. Compilation producer Zach Braff was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for Motion Pictures, Television or Other Visual Media for his work on the album.

Album information

The music that accompanied the film was hand-picked by Zach Braff. Commenting on the selections, Braff said that "Essentially, I made a mix CD with all of the music that I felt was scoring my life at the time I was writing the screenplay." The film’s budget limitations meant that obtaining all the songs Braff wanted for the film proved difficult, but Braff felt that the soundtrack was so integral to the script, he sent a copy of it with every request he sent out.

The music in the film features a number of indie-rock artists, notably The Shins. In an early scene, Sam passes Andrew a headset which is playing the song "New Slang" by The Shins as she says "You gotta hear this one song — it’ll change your life; I swear." A second Shins song, "Caring Is Creepy", is also featured on the soundtrack. The presence of Simon & Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy in New York" on the soundtrack has been cited by some as evidence of a connection to The Graduate. Commenting on the soundtrack’s importance to the film, Sponic Zine wrote, "Braff did a masterful job of choosing songs that exemplified the emotional subtleties in the film… he put together a group of songs that complement each other perfectly and, when put together into one album, create something amazing, almost as if they never should have been apart."