The mall features prominent specialty retailers including Cotton On, Sephora, Guess, Zara, Michael Kors, H&M, and Forever 21.

With approximately 4,200 jobs in retail services and over 120 individual stores, Kings Plaza is the largest indoor shopping center within the borough of Brooklyn.

[8][10] At the south end of the block is a multi-level parking garage, accessible from northbound Flatbush Avenue and East 55th Street.

[12][13] At the easternmost end of the site extending to East 58th Street is Mill Basin Plaza, a separate complex owned by Kimco Realty.

As part of a recent sustainability effort, Macerich has equipped the plant with an interconnection to provide up to 6 MW of excess power to the local Con Edison grid if and when needed, which has been used particularly in the summer heat season.

[16][17] A few months after the mall opened in 1970, the New York City Transit Authority, bowing to demands of Brooklyn residents eager to get to the shopping center, initiated a new set of bus transfers which eliminated mall-goers from having to pay a second fare on buses to Kings Plaza, years before all double fares in the city were abolished.

[20] Prior to the construction of Kings Plaza, the site was occupied by a Standard Oil petroleum storage facility, built in the 1930s.

[8] In protest of the new mall, local residents barricaded nearby side streets to prevent traffic congestion from spilling over to residential blocks.

Although Kings Plaza's owners did not release official visitation figures, by 1983, there were 20,000 cars passing through the mall's parking lot each day, and the city was earning $12 million per year from sales tax collected at each of the 150 stores.

However, both merchants and shoppers expressed concerns about theft at Kings Plaza, and that year, the mall expanded its private security force.

[1] In mid-1983, the owners of the mall proposed instituting a 50-cent parking charge to pay for improvements and the private security force, to be collected starting in October 1983.

[42][43] Alexander's real estate holdings, including Kings Plaza, would live on as an affiliate of Vornado Realty Trust who assumed management of the property.

[46] A $50 million renovation program, begun in May 1999, included a new glass entrance at Flatbush Avenue and upgrades to the mall interior.

[55] In September 2016, Macerich announced that the Sears store at Kings Plaza would close and be reconstructed for Primark and Zara.

The incident began at about 5 p.m.[61][62] and continued until the mall shuttered at 7 p.m. A temporary "no teens" rule was issued, banning all underaged people without an accompanying adult.

[63] It was reported that the incident was a violent flashmob organized via social networking services[64][63] and intended to become the "world's largest knockout game".

[64] On the morning of September 17, 2018, a seven-alarm fire broke out on the second and third floor levels of the mall's parking garage.

The New York City Police Department detained a suspect and filed arson charges the same day.