The Last Carousel in Paramus Isn't at Either Mall
Westfield Garden State Plaza was drawing roughly 20 million visitors a year as of a 2022 company announcement about new restaurant openings there. The borough built its national reputation on retail: two regional malls, a stretch of Route 4 and Route 17 lined with big boxes, more square footage of stores per capita than almost anywhere else in New Jersey. So it says something that the one carousel still spinning in town isn't inside either mall. It's at Van Saun County Park, and it has outlasted both of the ones that used to be a bigger draw.
The Golden Horse Carousel at Paramus Park mall closed in 2013. The Venetian Carousel at Garden State Plaza followed in 2016. The Millennium Carousel at Van Saun, built in 2000 by the county parks department, is still running, and it's now the only operating carousel left in the entire borough. If you've lived here long enough to remember riding either of the mall versions as a kid, the county-run one quietly became the last one standing while nobody was really tracking it.
That's the pattern worth noticing this August. The things that have actually held up in Paramus aren't the ticketed, retail-anchored attractions. They're the free, publicly run ones: a library concert series that's been quietly filling a bandshell all summer, and a county park that never had a corporate parent to shut it down. Here's what that looks like right now, and how to plan around it if you want to catch both in one visit.
The Paramus Cultural Arts Council runs its Terrific Tuesday Summer Concert Series at the Valley Hospital Paramus Bandshell, tucked behind the Main Library at 116 E. Century Road. It's free, family-friendly, and has been running weekly through the summer with acts ranging from tribute bands to solo singer-songwriters.
Captain Jack, a Billy Joel tribute act, played the bandshell on August 4. Two more shows remain on the calendar this month:
| Date | Performer | Day of week |
|---|---|---|
| Aug. 17 | Disco Divas | Monday |
| Aug. 25 | Dave Fields | Tuesday |
Notice the Aug. 17 date. Despite the series' name, that show lands on a Monday, not a Tuesday. It's a small scheduling quirk, but it matters if you're trying to plan a full day around it, because of what's happening across town at Van Saun Park.
The Millennium Carousel at Van Saun runs every day from April through October except Tuesdays, when it shuts down for maintenance. That means most weeks, the Terrific Tuesday concert and the carousel are on opposite schedules. Show up on a typical Tuesday night expecting to ride the carousel earlier in the day and then catch the concert, and the carousel will already be closed.
August 17 is the exception. Because that show falls on a Monday this year, it's the one night this month where a Van Saun visit earlier in the day and a bandshell show in the evening actually line up without either one being closed. It's not a coincidence anyone advertises. It just falls out of two separate schedules that don't usually talk to each other.
Van Saun County Park stretches across Paramus and River Edge and is run by the Bergen County Parks Department, which means none of what's inside depends on a mall's leasing decisions. The Bergen County Zoo inside the park is open daily this season from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with last entry at 4 p.m. The zoo's animal roster includes red wolves, bison, big cats, horses, and an alligator, but the county's own parks communications coordinator, Mark Rotundo, has said the prairie dog enclosure is a personal favorite, drawing a steady stream of visitors who come specifically to watch them pop in and out of their burrows.
Rotundo has described Van Saun as one of the standouts in the county's entire park system:
"We have a great park system throughout from Mahwah to the Meadowlands, but I'd say for Van Saun, it's definitely one of the finest jewels that we have here in the county."
Beyond the zoo and carousel, the park runs the Safari Express, a narrow-gauge miniature railroad with three separate trains still in rotation, that carries riders past the zoo's exhibits and through railroad crossings and a short tunnel. The Harmony Playground includes a seasonal water sprinkler feature, open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and it's built to be accessible. Pony rides run on a schedule that's almost as particular as the carousel's:
If you're timing a visit around the pony rides specifically, Tuesdays and Thursdays are dead ends there too. Between the carousel, the pony rides, and the concert series, this month's calendar rewards a little planning more than it looks like it should.
If you want to turn either concert night into a full evening rather than just a free hour on a lawn chair, Garden State Plaza still has the dining options it's had for a few years now. Fogo de Chão, the Brazilian steakhouse with its churrasco grill built into the center of the dining room, has been operating on the mall's second level near Macy's since February 2023. Eddie V's Prime Seafood, which arrived at the mall as part of the same expansion that brought in Fogo de Chão, is a few steps away if you'd rather do seafood and steak in a quieter room. Neither is new, but that's part of the point. They're part of the same pattern as the carousel: the things that have stuck around in Paramus tend to be the ones that didn't need to reinvent themselves to survive.
None of this is really about a concert series or a carousel schedule on their own. It's that in a town whose entire identity got built around retail square footage, the stuff that's proven the most durable is the stuff nobody had to pay to walk into. The mall carousels came and went with lease cycles and corporate ownership changes. The one at Van Saun, run by the county, just kept going. The library's concert series doesn't have a naming-rights sponsor pulling out or a tenant mix changing around it. It just shows up on a bandshell behind a public building, week after week, whether or not anyone outside Paramus is paying attention.
If you're already living this stretch of Paramus summer, that's probably not news to you in the way the mall's dining tenants are. But the actual mechanics of it, the fact that the surviving carousel isn't the one you'd guess, the fact that its own maintenance schedule quietly blocks out the series it's supposed to complement, the fact that one Monday date this August breaks that pattern, is the kind of detail that only shows up if you're tracking both calendars at once.
Two more free Tuesday nights are left in August. One of them, technically, isn't even a Tuesday.
If you're the kind of person who tracks a town this closely, chances are you also think about what your own place in it is worth. That's a conversation Keren Abraham has with Paramus neighbors all the time, no pressure attached. Let's make it happen. Get your free home valuation whenever you're ready.
As a trusted advisor, I am dedicated to serving my community, clients, and friends. My ultimate goal is to provide a 1st class, white-glove experience, ensuring a smooth and seamless move. With my extensive experience as a businesswoman, I am committed to guiding you towards making the right investment decisions.