[C.]

How Not to Build a Supermall: $5 Billion, 5 Governors, 3 Developers, and 15 Years
Chris Christie once called American Dream “the ugliest damn building in New Jersey.” Will it ever open?

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2...an-dream-mall/

Don Ghermezian wants to pitch us on the American Dream, but he has a few conditions. First, we’re not allowed to record his eight-minute presentation. Second, we can ask him only a few questions, at the end. Third, if they’re about his family, he won’t say much. “This is a $4.8 billion project that will be the center of the universe,” he says, promising we’ll be impressed. If not, “you’ll be the first ever to leave here without thinking, ‘Holy shit. These guys are incredible.’ ”

Ghermezian is speaking in the New Jersey Meadowlands offices of Triple Five, a family business that owns North America’s two biggest shopping centers: West Edmonton Mall and Mall of America. Triple Five are the incredible guys in question; Ghermezian is the company’s president. The future center of the universe is across the turnpike, a 91-acre tract of filled-in wetlands now home to a structure Governor Chris Christie, something of an expert on dismal spectacles, called “the ugliest damn building in New Jersey, maybe America.”

The first thing Ghermezian means for us to understand is that his family isn’t building a mall. Online shopping is killing malls; American Dream is one of only two in the country being built from the ground up. Its extravagant attractions make it “internet-proof,” says Ghermezian, who is in his 40s and wears a big watch and expensive sneakers. Beyond its 450 shops and restaurants, half of the 3 million-square-foot complex will be devoted to entertainment: a DreamWorks water park, a Nickelodeon theme park, a Legoland, a ski slope, an aquarium, a performing arts space, a movie theater, an ice rink, a miniature golf course, and a kosher food hall, all enclosed in a glass bubble.