The Ghermezian family owns Triple Five, which in turn owns the Mall of America in Minnesota and the West Edmonton Mall in Canada.
Triple Five’s flagship malls in Minnesota and Edmonton are not only earth-shattering in size but contain far more than shops—an indoor amusement and water park, theaters and more. There are even submarines (tiny ones) in a lake in the Canadian mall. A Canadian joke says the Ghermezians own more subs than the Canadian Navy.
The immigrant family also runs other firms in more than a dozen industries spanning from real estate, banking and finance to manufacturing and entertainment management. But they’re not stopping there.
The privately-owned company announced plans last week to build a 7.5-million-square-foot retail, entertainment and amusement complex in the Meadowlands of northern New Jersey, with its first phase of 3 million square feet to open in time for the 2014 Super Bowl, which will be held next door at the New Meadowlands Stadium. The family is pouring $1.5 billion into the project; that’s on top of the $2 billion that has already been spent.
According to Triple Five’s website, the amusement complex—dubbed the American Dream—is 80 percent complete. But now, “Triple Five and its team of experts, architects and designers are making changes to the exterior to improve aesthetics and to the interior to improve retail attraction and retention,” the website said. “Triple Five is also adding new world scale interactive components including, amongst other things, an amusement park, ice rink and water park, to make American Dream a true tourism entertainment center.”
The Ghermezian family is originally from Iran, where they started out as carpet merchants and ended up as megamall moguls. The family immigrated to New York in the 1940s, and then left the US for Canada, settling in Montreal. In the 1960s, and moving west later to Edmonton, Alberta.
The Ghermezian family typically shies away from the spotlight, but the new project has become very public. “The name (American Dream) is really important to us—we are a family of immigrants, four brothers who came here looking for that American dream,” Paul Ghermezian, one of 30-plus grandsons of family patriarch Jacob Ghermezian, the one who originally immigrated from Iran, told New Jersey’s Star-Ledger. “They want to share that with everybody.”
The family’s business comes with its share of problems. In the early 2000s, Triple Five successfully sued its Mall of America business partner, Simon Property Group, claiming the property group breached a partnership agreement by allegedly negotiating an ownership deal with a third investment partner. Though Triple Five won in court, the case brought to light angrily worded letters between the companies, and indicated how the family can conduct sharp elbow business.
Not everything Triple Five has started has been completed. Two projects—one at Niagara Falls in the 1980s and a project called the American Dream Mall in Silver Spring, Maryland, in the 1990s—fell through because of disagreements about financial incentives offered by state and local officials.
But the Ghermezians are convinced the American Dream at Meadowlands will be a success.
“This project has been of interest to Triple Five for several years because of the great potential that it represents,” Mall of America spokesman Dan Jasper wrote New Jersey’s Star-Ledger in an email. “The large surrounding population, vibrant sports/entertainment district, and drawing appeal for world-wide tourists were all very positive traits.”
So far, New Jersey has offered Triple Five $200 million in financing, but Governor Chris Christie said the parties are still finalizing the specifics.
A story passed down through the Ghermezian family shows a longtime vision the family had for its business. Jacob Ghermezian, the Iranian-born family patriarch, told his four sons when they were young, “When you grow up, I want you to build the biggest building in the world.”