Eisele's Is Sold and Joy's Farm Is Becoming Brightview: What's Left of Paramus's Farm Country This Fall?

On September 9, the roughly six-acre Eisele's Nursery & Garden Center property at 232 Oradell Avenue sold for $14.5 million. NJ.com reported that the deal clears the way for affordable housing on one of the last large undeveloped parcels in one of Bergen County's busiest commercial corridors. On Pascack Road, the old Joy's Farm is now Brightview Joy's Farm, a senior living community with its Welcome Center already open.

Both changes trace back to the same borough study, begun in 2019, that named Paramus's remaining farm and nursery parcels. Seven years later, most of that list has changed hands or found a new use. Denny Wiggers Garden Center on Paramus Road, which was on the same list, is the one still selling plants.

The five parcels on the 2019 list

TAPinto Paramus reported in 2021 that the Borough Council declared Joy Farm one of six properties in the borough "in need of rehabilitation." That followed a 2019 study of several lots, including Joy Farms, Eisele's Nursery, Denny Wiggers Garden Center, a lot on the former site of Treeland Nursery and a vacant lot near Parkway Elementary School. NJ.com describes the 2019 designation as the step that opened those nursery sites to residential redevelopment.

Here is where the three best-known parcels on that list stand going into November 2026.

The Treeland lot and the parcel near Parkway Elementary round out the list. Neither has had the kind of public sale or opening that marked 2026 for Oradell Avenue and Pascack Road.

Pascack Road went first

Joy's Farm was the first parcel on the list to move. In July 2021, the council weighed a proposal for a "Senior Continuum of Care Campus" on the 16-acre Pascack Road property, which replaced an earlier plan for 128 townhomes. The argument for the change was fiscal. According to TAPinto, the applicant's attorney put the gap between the two plans at about $800,000 a year in the borough's favor.

The version now being built is smaller than that first 332-unit concept. The Paramus Post carried Brightview's February 17, 2026 announcement of its Welcome Center at 733 Pascack Road. That announcement describes 175 apartments, split among 93 Independent Living, 40 Assisted Living, 16 Gallery Assisted Living and 26 Memory Care units. Brightview's own community page and NJ.com's June 2025 coverage both give 170 apartments, and NJ.com said completion was expected in late 2026. The project kept the farm's name, so the Brightview Joy's Farm sign is now the most visible use of "Joy's Farm" on Pascack Road.

Then Oradell Avenue

Eisele's went next. The nursery closed for good before the 2026 spring season after 80 years in business, and in late April it held a liquidation auction for its remaining trucks, a wood chipper and bulk landscaping supplies. The family's own site still carries the notice that the business is permanently closed.

According to NJ.com, the sale announcement did not identify the buyer, say how many units are planned or say when construction might start. The same article places the parcel within a wider pattern of affordable housing approvals nearby. That includes a 65-unit, 100% affordable complex at the former Oster site on Route 17, which the Planning Board approved earlier this year. The borough's affordable housing office runs the program those units feed into.

The two moves were linked from the start. The 2021 Joy Farm coverage noted that the senior campus could count toward the state affordable housing obligation the borough had to meet through 2025. Eisele's is now set to serve that same need directly.

The nurseries that weren't on the list changed too

The 2019 study covered only part of the borough's growing land. Two other well-known parcels went through their own transitions over the same years.

• Revicki Farms. NorthJersey.com reported in April 2022 that the council approved 24 townhouses for the former Revicki Farms site. The paper called it one of two plans at the time to bring new development to borough nurseries.
• The former Paramus Garden Center, 143 W. Ridgewood Avenue. TAPinto reported in October 2025 that the 4-acre corner lot at West Ridgewood Avenue and Paramus Road sold to Liger Crossing, LLC, which proposed 40 townhomes. The site was a garden center for decades. Before that, it held a historic residence and a gristmill from the Revolutionary War era. The plan is to improve the historic home and reuse it as a small office.

That corner is the same one where a CVS and a drive-thru bank were proposed in February 2021, on the adjacent lots at 697 Paramus Road and 143 W. Ridgewood Avenue. The lot sits on the eastern bank of the Saddle River, across from the Ridgewood Duck Pond and close to the six-mile Saddle River County Park trail. Anyone who walks that stretch of the county path will see the change from the trail.

This has happened in Paramus before

The borough has been through this kind of change once already. According to the Church of the Annunciation's parish history, Paramus was a farming area within Midland Township for more than two centuries, because railroad construction in the 1800s had bypassed it. After World War II, in the parish's words, "celery fields and strawberry patches sprouted housing developments for returning GIs." By 1952 the population had grown enough to support two new Catholic parishes, Our Lady of the Visitation on Farview Avenue and the Church of the Annunciation on Midland Avenue.

Postwar housing took the crop fields. The nurseries and farm stands that held on afterward became the last working remnant of that farm history. This time the 2019 study named specific parcels ahead of time, and the changes since then have followed that list largely one parcel at a time.

Where Paramus still buys mulch, mums and firewood

On the 2019 list, only Denny Wiggers Garden Center at 387 Paramus Road is still operating as a garden center. Its website, updated in early October 2026, lists live trees, shrubs and flowers along with topsoil, mulch, sod for events, custom stone furniture, floral arrangements and firewood delivery. Its posted hours are Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The site gives two different answers for Sunday, so it makes sense to call 201-444-0155 before a weekend trip.

For pumpkins and fall decor, the closest farm-market option sits just over the border. Goffle Brook Farms on Goffle Road in Ridgewood posted its fall lineup on September 18, 2026, with mums, pumpkins, squash, gourds, ornamental peppers and corn stalks. Its farm market also carries local produce and farm-raised and homemade goods that change with the season.

Both businesses post their hours online, and it is worth checking them before you go as the season winds down.

What the petition is asking for

The Eisele's closure drew pushback from some residents, according to NJ.com, along with an online petition urging the borough not to let the land "be paved." The petition, "Before It's Paved", is hosted on Change.org. Its organizers posted an update in August 2026 that pressed for a public vote and for answers about preservation decisions.

The October 8, 2026 update was more specific. It points to the state statute on nonbinding public questions, N.J.S.A. 19:37-1. The organizers' own summary says such a vote would not force the borough to buy land or require an owner to sell. It also cites the borough's 2026 municipal budget of $98,073,155 and asks the Mayor and Borough Council to explain whether that procedure could apply to the former Eisele's property. These are the petitioners' requests, made in their own update.

If you own property near one of these former farm or nursery sites, the changes on Oradell Avenue, Pascack Road and the West Ridgewood corner affect how your street fits into the borough around it. Christian Di Stasio tracks these redevelopment parcels lot by lot. Schedule a white‑glove consultation to talk through what the changes near your home mean for you.