The American Dream Mall, or: Why Mega Malls Are Dumb in 2024

[noelbotevera]

Some context for those unfamiliar, copped from this article: the American Dream Mall is another thing on the Meadowlands complex in New Jersey. In 2002, the Meadowlands had some spare land and wanted to develop it, even though this land was wetlands. Plans for Xanadu envision by The Mills (the real estate firm) were to include a mall, two office towers, and a large hotel; then they wanted an ice rink, an amusement park, and apparently even a small baseball field.

Ground broke in September 2004 with an estimated price tag of $2 billion. Another real estate firm, Colony Capital, took over the project in 2006 because the original firm got hit with an SEC investigation. In 2008, Colony Capital wanted to build a Ferris wheel on top of all the other stuff. Also that year a little known event called the Great Recession happens, so money dries up and construction pauses.

In 2011, Triple Five Group who owns Mall of America takes over the project. Chris Christie thought the building was the ugliest one in all of New Jersey. They aim for a 2014 opening because of the Super Bowl that will be held at the New Meadowlands.

The next year (2012), Dreamworks wants to add a water park to the mall complex. The Giants and Jets sue Triple Five because they think the mall will cause parking issues at their stadium. The suit is eventually dropped in 2014, after the Super Bowl. For those keeping score, nobody thought to build a parking garage for this super mega mall.

Construction drags on for the next six years. In 2018, Triple Five announces another mega mall in Miami even though they've spent $700 million trying to build this mall. That mall was projected to cost $4 billion. Construction continues into 2019 and 2020, along with attracting tenants.

The mall's opening is delayed to July 2020 due to COVID. The mall is half empty by the time it opens and barely has any tenants. Everyone realizes that they forgot to build rail access, even though most people in the NYC metro area travel by train. The mall costs $5 billion, a 150% cost overrun. It took 14 years to build.

Context over. As of last year (2023), the mall is facing 82 lawsuits, owes East Rutherford $8 million, and is in $245 million of debt.

Have I mentioned that another mall, Garden State Plaza, is 9 miles away? Have I mentioned that the buses that serve Garden State Plaza are accessible from the Port Authority Bus Terminal? Have I mentioned that Amazon exists?

[mgk920]

I'll say it again, "Malls are soooo 'last century'".

Mike

[SEWIGuy]

I get why in 2004, the idea of a mega mall in that location made sense. That was pretty peak of those types of malls as tourist destinations. But they really should have pulled the plug at some point.

[Scott5114]

Also that year a little known event called the Great Recession happens, so money dries up and construction pauses.

It's kind of amazing how many big projects got killed by that one thing. It caused the Fontainebleau Casino here in Las Vegas to get cancelled midway through construction. Then the half-finished structure ended up getting sold to a few different people, renamed a bunch of times, until the original owners were able to buy it back and finish it. It finally opened in December 2023.

[epzik8]

Hell, my local one is far from mega and I've been praying for its demise for years. They actually did tear down part of it (a former Sears/Wards) for a separate shopping center...which remains practically unleased.

[Jim]

American Dream seemed pretty busy and lively on the day I was there last July to try out Big Snow.  All we really did other than the skiing was to walk some and get lunch in the main food court, which was packed and had a good number of restaurants.  But I've only been once so it might have been an unusually busy Thursday for some reason.  I think it was right after the Mr. Beast restaurant also opened.

Edit: I do agree generally that the mall concept is no longer a good one (not that I was ever a fan).

[noelbotevera]

I get why in 2004, the idea of a mega mall in that location made sense. That was pretty peak of those types of malls as tourist destinations. But they really should have pulled the plug at some point.

I think the 1990s was the perfect time to open a mega mall. Even though Mall of America was at the tail end of mall building (1992), it was novel and located somewhere where luxury stores were few and far between. By the 2000s, traditional mall anchors like Montgomery Ward and Sears were in decline. Not to mention online shopping starting to pick up by the end of the decade.

Also, here's something else to chew on: why open a luxury mall here of all places? If you can afford something like Nordstrom or Saks, you could afford a trip to the solo stores in NYC instead of going to American Dream. You could argue that the American Dream is intended for tourists who are staying in New Jersey (based on attractions like the ski hill, waterpark, and mini amusement park), but I'd wager that most tourists are interested in spending their time in the city rather than at the mall.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I don't know, maybe it's the exception to the rule but Mall of America remains a major tourist and economic draw here.

[roadman65]

The fact many older malls have died, been torn down, or are still barely hanging prove the malls have outlived its fame.

[In_Correct]

They might be dumb, yet they are not going any where.

The debate in this thread was an attempt to convince me that Mega Malls are dumb by using the American Dream Mall as an example. However, that mall was simply a good example of very bad planning; and also do not ever forget that there are more customers than ever that have very few plans about their lives.

When you plan some thing badly, expect delays for its completion, and when opened, it might make absolutely no sense to utilize be cause it has very bad design which causes confusion, delay, and is inconvenient, and ineffecient. There is also examples in designs, plans, and proposals of roads. They get completed, and could have been done much better quality than that.   

There are a group of Customers that enjoy shopping malls in an attempt to resolve boredom in their lives, and are brainwashed with very extremely low self esteem regarding their bodies. Any money that they have is not spent on Housing nor Transportation. Instead, these Brigand Vagrants camp out at Shopping Malls any opportunity that they can.

The Brigand Vagrants are indeed practically homeless; which is unimportant to these Smartphone Swindlers that play very bad video games and listen to very bad music instead of try to work at their " Nine To Five " jobs they advocate against, which is ironically and usually Dispensaries, ( to think that they would enjoy working, but they are unable to stay focused even at their dream job ?! )

The Smartphone Swindlers spend their time and money at Mega Malls, even touring them, keeping them around ... and one of the examples of their Addictions to Shopping is their lust about Weirdos & Perverts that were rightfully incarcerated. With apparently nobody else to brainwash them, they attempt to look for answers not knowing that their bodies just sneezed. They begin their search at Mega Malls.

They buy things, and do not remember buying them, a very common symptom of addiciton. It reminds me of Sell Me This by The Shuffle Demons:

" I bought a thousand useless things, and took them all to the dump; Took the soul of the earth [ in an attempt ] to make the economy jump; I do not care if we are headed straight for disaster; I just want to get my junk food faster !! "

In truth to these lyrics, The Chinese had imported plastic, in an attempt to recycle it. The Smartphone Swindlers waste away at Mega Malls that it allegedly compelled The D.P.R.K. to launch Trash Balloons. Perhaps we should blame The Smartphone Swindlers for it.

If I ever decide to pull an Ishowspeed Maneuver and Tour Some Random Place, perhaps I shall visit a Mega Mall, as they have various Recreational Facilities that Otto Rocket himself might dream of visiting also. My particular interests are Ferris Wheels, and Water Parks. Hotels also. ( Donate to your favourite Smartphone Swindler so that he can stay warm and / or dry instead of attempting to remember how to activate the roof on his fancy convertible car some where outside. ) Occasionally The Smartphone Swindlers forget what they were quarreling about to begin with, and instead gather together for various Tour Events, typically centered around these Mega Centers. I promise you, they are obsessed with them. Their addictions to shopping for Various Nonsense Items is what keeps Mega Centers around for ever. 

Do Not Believe Me ?! Then Why Is There Plans For " American Dream Miami " ?!

[Road Hog]

It's hard to say. Some malls are viable and some are not. Location is a huge factor, such as McCain Mall in Arkansas, which remains the closest mall for probably a million Arkansans.

Other factors include shopper preferences, including those who would prefer to park within 20 steps of a front door like with the Sherman (TX) Town Center, rather than walk a dying mall and get practically panhandled by a bunch of kids being pressed by their bosses in dying businesses.

[roadman65]

In New Jersey many malls lost anchors and the mall barely survives as such.  However, not a location keeping it alive, but demographics is The Mall At Short Hills in Millburn. 

The mall is High End with the Champagne and Caviar crowds keeping all anchors occupied unlike other malls nearby attracting the lower middle class demos that have vacancies where once popular stores once occupied. 

For some reason the upscale crowd still digs upscale store in malls as Short Hills is the proof.

[1995hoo]

I was at Tysons Corner yesterday to go to Nordstrom and the mall was mobbed. I have a feeling the very hot weather was a major reason why. The elderly people who walk laps around the inside of some malls early in the morning may be onto something with how hot it's been.

[jeffandnicole]

The American Dream Mall is a good example of how no one can predict the future (at least very well), and how much can change in a short period of time. When the concept was conceived in the late 1990's and broke ground in the early 2000's as Xanadu, online shopping was still fairly new.  Facebook and Twitter didn't exist. 

The American Dream Mall survives because it's not a traditional mall, but a destination resort without being a resort. Many go for the Big Snow or the amusement park.  The mall is very heavily oriented towards restaurants.  The shopping aspect is almost secondary.

There, of course, are many things wrong with it. Timing was not on its side of course.  And while I disagree that they "forgot" to provide access via train, that's not really the mall's doing.  They would've needed to work with NJ Transit, PATH or another train option to route rail there.  And being that rail costs roughly $100 million per mile in that area, plus more for bridges and stations and such, it was a cost no transit agency wanted to spend. 

Many Mega Malls themselves are actually doing fairly well, all things considering, since they're a destination onto themselves.  You probably won't find any of them with occupancy anywhere near full, but people are willing to overlook some emptiness when they're there for other attractions, or its the main source of (chain) restaurants in the area.

As far as mall-walkers go, our local mall, pre-Covid, opened at 7am for those that wanted to walk the mall.  Supposedly you were supposed to go into one door, register, and walk around.  I stopped in a few times and my experiences were by 8am all doors were open because there's a fair amount of maintenance workers going in and out, or store employees doing some work before the stores open.  The Starbucks and Cinnabon were open, capturing some sales from that early morning group of people in the mall.

[Max Rockatansky]

I used to work Loss Prevention at the Scottsdale Fashion Square Dillard's circa 2004-2005.  That mall was always super high end and usually the stores/anchor stores that failed were stuff like Sears.  By all accounts it seems to be still doing very well since it became a tourist destination and a comfortable place to be in the summer.

[TheStranger]

I was at Tysons Corner yesterday to go to Nordstrom and the mall was mobbed. I have a feeling the very hot weather was a major reason why.

The latter sentence actually highlights how indoor malls are thriving at a rather insane rate in the Philippines (particularly in Metro Manila).  Maybe not unique to that country but the hot climates really have encouraged malls becoming key community centers in a lot of places; I have witnessed a kindergarten graduation at SM City San Pablo as one example of this sort of thing.

The other side effect of mall popularity in the Philippines is just how many of them can be placed within a half mile of another mall - something not common during the heyday of indoor malls in the United States, where larger land plots and more developed suburban boulevard and highway networks are more readily found.  Makati, the financial capital of the country, has multiple situations like this: Walter-Mart Makati is adjacent to Makati Cinema Square (now named Makati Central Square), and is also three blocks west of the sprawling Greenbelt complex.  The small Paseo Center mall is about three and a half blocks north of the Greenbelt area.  Ayala North Exchange is approximately two and a half blocks south of the recent Assembly Grounds At The Rise mall.

[jeffandnicole]

In densely populated New Jersey, it's not uncommon for malls to be unusually close to each other.  Bergen Town Center and Garden State Plaza are only 1.5 miles away from each other, both along NJ 4.  A 3rd mall, Paramus Park, is about 4 miles away from these two malls.  The Cherry Hill Mall and Moorestown Mall are 4 miles apart, accessible via NJ 38. 

[Bobby5280]

The 1970's all-indoor shopping mall concept is, for the most part, obsolete. "Town centers" have taken over in most parts of the country. The best ones aren't as dependent on retail as old indoor shopping malls. They'll have more in the way of restaurants, bars, leisure activities, galleries, etc.

Things aren't so great for town centers either. The Amazons of the online world decimated a few categories of shopping center tenants. Books stores? Gone. Music stores? Gone. Stores that sell movies? Gone.

Commercial movie theaters have long been anchor tenants of both 70's style indoor malls and newer town centers. Cinemas are now a critically endangered species, thanks mostly to very stupid choices made by movie studios/distributors. Today it is extremely easy to skip a movie's theatrical release and wait to watch it on TV at home. You only wait a few weeks, if even that, and save a bunch of money.

In the 1990's a movie could take upwards of a year (or longer) to go from its theatrical debut to then being available to buy or rent on VHS tape or DVD. During that era, watching at home usually involved a modest sized, square-shaped CRT television. Low resolution image, and maybe half the picture might have been chopped off via panning and scanning. There were serious penalties to suffer for skipping a theatrical release back then. Today there are no penalties. We all have huge HDTV monitors at home now. Many of us have insanely fast Internet connections, which allow movies to be streamed at very high quality levels. We can hook up elaborate home theater sound systems, even ones with Dolby Atmos ceiling surround speakers. At home, we have a pause button if we need to take a leak.

It doesn't make sense why movie studios shrank the theatrical release window down to a few weeks. The home video industry is in the toilet. Sales of DVDs and Blu-ray discs have cratered. Most people stream movies now via a subscription service (Netflix, Prime Video, etc). But the market can support only so many of those services; it's clear movie studios and their media company parents are losing money on these operations. It seems like more money is there to be made on the theatrical side.

Movies from 20-30 years ago seem more interesting than the often derivative crap getting released today. Cinemas are suffering pretty badly. They're operating on very narrow margins. Staffing is kept at minimal levels, even during peak times like Friday night or all day Saturday. That leads to theaters that don't get cleaned properly between shows and various things falling apart. We have a 13-plex in my town Carmike opened several years ago; it was really nice at the time. It has a bigger than average IMAX house (550 seats, screen more than 70' wide). AMC has been letting the place go to hell. I worry the place could be shut down soon. That's our only multiplex. We have one other single-screen theater that only operates part time.

Dozens of cinemas are closing on a steady basis around the country. There are older, under-performing ones being closed. Many high profile cinemas have closed in big cities. The property owner refuses to renew the lease, wanting to sell to a more profitable tenant. We could see the rate of cinema closures radically accelerate. Companies like AMC and Regal can bleed only so much red ink. Smaller chains and independents are just as vulnerable. If enough theaters close it will cause production lines of digital projectors and other industry-specific things to shut down for good. If the theatrical release platform fails on the whole, the movie industry as we know it will also fail. A movie that doesn't play in theaters is a made for TV movie. No studio is going to spend well over $100 million producing a 2 hour movie that only plays on TV screens.

The loss of movie theaters will be another thing accelerating the decline of brick and mortar shopping centers.

[hotdogPi]

Malls aren't dying here. The Mall at Rockingham Park and the Pheasant Lane Mall have valid reasons for surviving, namely being in New Hampshire less than two miles away from the Massachusetts state line, and New Hampshire has no sales tax. However, the Mall of New Hampshire (20 miles from the state line) and the Burlington Mall (in Massachusetts) are also doing fine. I haven't been in the Northshore Mall in a while (also in Massachusetts), but it also seemed to be holding up.

[roadman65]

In densely populated New Jersey, it's not uncommon for malls to be unusually close to each other.  Bergen Town Center and Garden State Plaza are only 1.5 miles away from each other, both along NJ 4.  A 3rd mall, Paramus Park, is about 4 miles away from these two malls.  The Cherry Hill Mall and Moorestown Mall are 4 miles apart, accessible via NJ 38. 

Menlo Park Mall in Edison and Woodbridge Center in Woodbridge are  2.5 miles apart on US 1.

[lepidopteran]

Commercial movie theaters have long been anchor tenants of both 70's style indoor malls and newer town centers.

(List of issues affecting the cinema industry deleted)

Don't forget one of the biggest complaints about the local movie theater -- snacks.  We all know about the $5 box of M&Ms or the 2-gallon-sized popcorn buckets, but another issue is that it's hard to find anything that's healthy, such as there being few drinks besides available soda.

[Scott5114]

There are a group of Customers that enjoy shopping malls in an attempt to resolve boredom in their lives, and are brainwashed with very extremely low self esteem regarding their bodies. Any money that they have is not spent on Housing nor Transportation. Instead, these Brigand Vagrants camp out at Shopping Malls any opportunity that they can.

The Brigand Vagrants are indeed practically homeless; which is unimportant to these Smartphone Swindlers that play very bad video games and listen to very bad music instead of try to work at their " Nine To Five " jobs they advocate against, which is ironically and usually Dispensaries, ( to think that they would enjoy working, but they are unable to stay focused even at their dream job ?! ) [...] With apparently nobody else to brainwash them, they attempt to look for answers not knowing that their bodies just sneezed. They begin their search at Mega Malls.

You and bandit should write a book together.

[SEWIGuy]

They might be dumb, yet they are not going any where.

The debate in this thread was an attempt to convince me that Mega Malls are dumb by using the American Dream Mall as an example. However, that mall was simply a good example of very bad planning; and also do not ever forget that there are more customers than ever that have very few plans about their lives.

When you plan some thing badly, expect delays for its completion, and when opened, it might make absolutely no sense to utilize be cause it has very bad design which causes confusion, delay, and is inconvenient, and ineffecient. There is also examples in designs, plans, and proposals of roads. They get completed, and could have been done much better quality than that.   

There are a group of Customers that enjoy shopping malls in an attempt to resolve boredom in their lives, and are brainwashed with very extremely low self esteem regarding their bodies. Any money that they have is not spent on Housing nor Transportation. Instead, these Brigand Vagrants camp out at Shopping Malls any opportunity that they can.

The Brigand Vagrants are indeed practically homeless; which is unimportant to these Smartphone Swindlers that play very bad video games and listen to very bad music instead of try to work at their " Nine To Five " jobs they advocate against, which is ironically and usually Dispensaries, ( to think that they would enjoy working, but they are unable to stay focused even at their dream job ?! )

The Smartphone Swindlers spend their time and money at Mega Malls, even touring them, keeping them around ... and one of the examples of their Addictions to Shopping is their lust about Weirdos & Perverts that were rightfully incarcerated. With apparently nobody else to brainwash them, they attempt to look for answers not knowing that their bodies just sneezed. They begin their search at Mega Malls.

They buy things, and do not remember buying them, a very common symptom of addiciton. It reminds me of Sell Me This by The Shuffle Demons:

" I bought a thousand useless things, and took them all to the dump; Took the soul of the earth [ in an attempt ] to make the economy jump; I do not care if we are headed straight for disaster; I just want to get my junk food faster !! "

In truth to these lyrics, The Chinese had imported plastic, in an attempt to recycle it. The Smartphone Swindlers waste away at Mega Malls that it allegedly compelled The D.P.R.K. to launch Trash Balloons. Perhaps we should blame The Smartphone Swindlers for it.

If I ever decide to pull an Ishowspeed Maneuver and Tour Some Random Place, perhaps I shall visit a Mega Mall, as they have various Recreational Facilities that Otto Rocket himself might dream of visiting also. My particular interests are Ferris Wheels, and Water Parks. Hotels also. ( Donate to your favourite Smartphone Swindler so that he can stay warm and / or dry instead of attempting to remember how to activate the roof on his fancy convertible car some where outside. ) Occasionally The Smartphone Swindlers forget what they were quarreling about to begin with, and instead gather together for various Tour Events, typically centered around these Mega Centers. I promise you, they are obsessed with them. Their addictions to shopping for Various Nonsense Items is what keeps Mega Centers around for ever. 

Do Not Believe Me ?! Then Why Is There Plans For " American Dream Miami " ?!

WTF is this?

[Max Rockatansky]

Someone who probably thinks being on this forum to "resolve the boredom in their life" is somehow more aspirational way to spend their time?  That or a fuck ton of paranoia and possibly drugs. 

[jeffandnicole]

I thought it was a very clever post.  Start it by saying something that sounds very sensible and may have a very valid point.  And then, bam, start talking about Brigand Vagrants, Smartphone Swindlers and Ishowspeed Maneuver, and now you have been suckered in to some 8th dimension time warp where you eventually convince yourself you're the one high on crack cocaine.