There is a shopping center that use to have parking lights that would be on a timer. They would come on and go off every day at the same time no matter if it was dark, etc. Now they have shoebox lights and they come on at various times everyday depending on the weather conditons. One day they may come on at 2pm and the next 4:20pm. My question is, how was this change done. Does modern lighting run on sensors now instead of vintage ones that ran on a timer?

They may begam to change the turning on time of the timer.
Or if the lamp turning on and off according to the sunset and sunrise times, operating with a PC.
Also, there are digital streetlight controllers, that have their turning on/off times, being updated by a table of sunrise and sunset times (Like in the case of Haifa roadlighting).

My guess is that they bypassed the timer and the new lights have individual photocontrols.