Mall of America Expansion: Interrupted
Expansion, Interrupted
Wall Street Journal July 1, 2009
Ambitious plans to expand the Mall of America, already the largest enclosed mall in the U.S., have been humbled in a nod to the recession and barren capital markets.
The mall, in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, has 4.2 million square feet of space. Until recently, the mall’s owner, Canada’s Triple Five Group, was planning to start construction this year on most of a $2.1 billion, 5.6 million-square-foot second phase. The expansion would have more than doubled the size of the mall.
But Triple Five has said the dour economy and scarcity of capital will allow only a piecemeal approach. The new plan is to start construction of a 500-room Renaissance hotel early next year, perhaps followed by an as-yet-unnamed “luxury entertainment” anchor tenant. Last month, Triple Five announced the Mayo Clinic signed a letter of intent to establish a large operation in the mall’s second phase catering to customers outside the clinic’s traditional patient base.
“It’s still the same plan as far as the components go” for the second phase, said Kurt Hagen, executive vice president of Triple Five. “But we’ve kind of reoriented them such that tenants such as Mayo and the hotel…can go out ahead of the mall’s core and shell.”
—Kris Hudson
Source of story: Wall Street Journal – WSJ.com.
