US developer, Triple Five – the company behind Canada’s West Edmonton Mall and the Mall of America – is proposing to build American Dream, Miami – a US$4bn (E3.7bn, £2.65bn) mall and leisure development near Miami Dade airport in Florida, US.
The mall would include a 200-acre entertainment complex with a theme park and 800ft indoor ski slope, as well as miniature golf, a waterpark, skating rink, submarine ride and indoor gardens.
Hotels, restaurants, mixed-use leisure and condos would complete the mix.
The mall would be the largest in the US, and one of two new projects in the pipeline from Triple Five, which is already on-site in New Jersey, US, with another American Dream Mall.
American Dream Miami would be located on a greenfield site at the intersection of the Florida Turnpike and Interstate 75, near Miami Lake. Negotiations for the land parcels needed for the project are thought to be well advanced.
The Miami metropolitan area is one of the fastest growing in the US, due to its climate and favourable tax regime. The airport has been extended in recent years and now offers flights to 150 international destinations on 80 airlines.
American Dream Miami is one of a number of retail and leisure schemes being slated for locations adjacent to airports, including the Resorts World Jeju development in South Korea and Park 21 near Amsterdam.
Triple Five is a family-owned business which was founded in Canada by Jacob Ghermezian in the late 1950s. It was the first company to combine retail and leisure on a large scale to create malls which were also destinations.
The company opened the West Edmonton Mall in the 1980s with an indoor waterpark and theme park - Fantasyland 1 - by Forrec, the Toronto-based entertainment and leisure planning and design firm.
The Mall of America followed in 1992 in Bloomington, Minnesota, and currently gets over 40m visitors a year. Triple Five’s developments record 112m visitors a year in total.
In a statement, the company said “It’s our intention that American Dream Miami will exceed our other world famous projects in all respects.”
American Dream Meadowlands in New Jersey is a controversial project which started life in 2003 as the Xanadu Mall. The project had already seen the failure of two backers and cost US$1.9bn (E1.75bn, £1.2bn) when Triple Five were brought in in 2011 with some state funding.
The company is adding more leisure and re-skinning the building to improve what has been called the "ugliest building in America". American Dream New Jersey is reportedly scheduled to open in 2016.
Triple Five has deep pockets. In addition to its interests in retail, the company now also operates across a diverse range of sectors, including mixed-use and residential real estate, hotels, food franchising, banking, oil, gas and minerals, engineering, truck manufacturing, technology, nuclear energy engineering, industrial manufacturing and bio-tech, among others.
