In New Jersey — home to more malls per square mile than any other state — retail centers appear to be uniformly braced for a hard holiday season to come. But those in the midst of opening or upgrading are adopting a wide variety of survival postures.

Xanadu, a $2 billion shopping and entertainment center rising in the Meadowlands, simply went to duck-and-cover mode; its planned opening this month was pushed back to next summer.

But other malls are proceeding to open, or reintroduce themselves, as a recession unfolds. Their owners and operators are straining to find the best strategy to lure consumers who are themselves increasingly hard pressed — or at least to find ways to justify the plans they settled on before the economic outlook turned dark.

“Our timing could be better,” acknowledged Scott Loventhal of Garden Commercial Properties, “but it is not terrible.” His Short Hills-based company is opening three malls in the state over the next few months.

“We have not yet seen any regional malls get into dangerous waters,” he said, “because New Jersey has yet to be victimized by any large-scale department store anchors going out of business.”

It is true, he said, that “the mom-and-pop operations, any small franchise tenants, are simply deer in headlights right now. Maybe they’re holding their own at an existing location, but they’re not going to be expanding at this time.”

But Garden Commercial, which owns and manages more than 25 million square feet of retail space, primarily in New Jersey and elsewhere in the Northeast, so far has been lucky to have only one of its mainstay midsize tenants — Linens ‘n Things — enter into bankruptcy protection.

The company’s new malls in Raritan, Linden and Edison will be anchored with a Wal-Mart or a Lowe’s Home Improvement Center — or both — to draw shoppers in large numbers. “In these difficult times, people are looking for value,” Mr. Loventhal said, and those two chains are still doing strong business.

The coming holiday season is expected to generate the lowest sales per square foot of store space since the recession of the 1980s, according to Mr. Loventhal. He, like other retail developers, referred to the overall retail market as “fragile.” But he said that it was possible to open new shopping centers at this time and have them succeed.

One trend that is helping, Mr. Loventhal said, involves providing malls with attached or adjacent commercial and office space. Tenant turnover is usually less rapid in offices than in retail centers, he said, and nearby stores and restaurants are considered a desirable amenity for office workers, thus raising lease values for both classes of property.

At Raritan Town Square, a 500,000-square-foot complex being built in Hunterdon County, the space is divided among stores, restaurants and office space. The first stores and restaurants at the center opened last month, including a Lowe’s and a LongHorn Steakhouse. Construction is under way on a 145,000-square-foot Wal-Mart.

Mixed uses are also part of the survival strategy at Princeton Forrestal Village in Plainsboro, although in this case the owners (Gale Real Estate) and managers (Levin Management) are determinedly sticking to their plan of creating an upscale niche.

Princeton Forrestal began in 1986 as an upscale mixed-use shopping center — pioneering for its time — with nightclubs and “lifestyle” services like a tailor, shoe-repair shop and express mail shipping service, in addition to designer clothing stores, an office building and a hotel. The retail part of the complex, which is off Route 1, was unsuccessful from the outset, though, and quickly evolved into an outlet center.

By the late 1990s, that type of retailing was not attracting crowds, either. In fact, shop space was mostly empty in 2003 when Gale bought Princeton Forrestal with the intention of refurbishing the entire property and taking its retail offerings back to upscale.

Over the last four years, Gale invested $8 million in repairs, upgrades and tenant recruitment efforts. It is now poised to take full advantage of this holiday season, whatever it brings, the developers said.

The level of affluence in the Princeton area makes the upscaling effort a sensible long-term plan, Matthew Harding, the president of Levin, said. He also pointed to a built-in market among office workers on site at the mall, and others who work in medical offices and corporate buildings along Route 1.

The Westin Hotel and Conference Center, adjacent to the shops, draws 600,000 visitors a year; about 1,400 a week are overnight guests. The restaurant space at the Westin was recently remodeled to create conference space, as two new upscale chain restaurants were added to the mall. Another, Tre Piani, which bills itself as part of the ecologically sensitive “slow food” movement, opened shortly after the sale to Gale.

Shoppers and hotel guests will continue to seek “lifestyle” services at Princeton Forrestal, said Fred Knapp, an asset manager with Gale, which is a division of Mack-Cali Realty.

A Can Do fitness center and an adjacent Koi spa — both are high-end Northeastern franchises — as well as the restaurants are drawing steady traffic to Princeton Forrestal, according to Mr. Knapp and Mr. Harding.

A Salt Creek Grille restaurant, built at the Route 1 edge of the mall, also gives it a prominent new “face” on the heavily traveled roadway, Mr. Harding said. Ruth’s Chris Steak House, only the third in New Jersey, draws customers from a wide area, he said.

Going into the holidays, the mall’s buffed-up retail space is 75 percent leased — which is above the national average of 72 percent for centers that have opened within the last year, according to retail specialists. The office building and space above the shops of the mall’s “Main Street” are 95 percent occupied.

A couple of retailers from Princeton Borough’s small, elite downtown have opened new, larger stores at Princeton Forrestal, lured by “aggressively priced rents,” Mr. Harding said. They are the Silver Shop, an antiques dealer, which opened a second store and is adding an adjacent art gallery, and Luxe Homes, a furnishings store, which relocated from a smaller downtown location.