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Shopping Centers Today -> January 2003
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WORLD’S BIGGEST MALL TO GROW
By Donna Mitchell
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| West Edmonton Mall has obtained permission to add retail as well as offices, homes and a facility for conventions and sports. |
City officials in Edmonton, Alberta, have given West Edmonton Mall the go-ahead for expansion plans that will turn the world’s largest regional mall into a massive mixed-use center.
Planning authorities in November rezoned West Edmonton from “shopping center” to “site specific development control” status to allow the mall, which is owned by the Ghermezian family, to add convention, office and residential components as well as more retail.
The expansion will bring about 322,920 square feet of additional retail space to the center. Other components will include an 8,000-seat facility for sports, trade shows and conventions, a 12-story office building and a 600-unit apartment building. Additional parking space will be built as well.
“The approval allows us to proceed with our vision that will complement our existing features and make our facility even healthier,” said Gary Hanson, West Edmonton’s COO and general manager.
Sheri Clegg, a West Edmonton spokeswoman, noted that the additions will probably take about 10 years to complete. The expansion is the fourth that West Edmonton has undertaken since it opened in 1981. The center currently features more than 800 stores, 25 sit-down restaurants, a casino, an amusement park, an indoor wave pool, a dolphin lagoon and two movie theaters.
“West Edmonton Mall will become a fully integrated mixed-use center,” after the expansion, said Travis Reynolds, the mall’s marketing and media relations manager. “The purpose is to take the mall to a new level.”
Meanwhile, there was progress on another front. As reported in The Edmonton Journal in November, the Ghermezians and others agreed to pay C$7 million ($4.4 million) to settle part of a lawsuit brought against the mall by the Alberta government and a province-owned financial institution called Alberta Treasury Branches, or ATB. At issue was the bankruptcy of the mall’s holding company, Triple Five Corp.
But West Edmonton and ATB are still entangled in a dispute over the validity of a 1994 mall re- financing. ATB alleges that the company obtained a 30-year, C$65 million, zero-interest loan by bribing an ATB official.
The lawsuit has threatened to stymie the expansion, and ATB is still trying to seize control of the mall. Mall officials declined to comment about the lawsuit. But they have much to say on the expansion.
“The younger generation of West Edmonton Mall ownership is putting its stamp on the next phase,” Reynolds said, referring to the Canadian-born offspring of the four Ghermezian brothers — Nader, Raphael, Bahman and Eskandar — who immigrated from Iran with their father, Jacob, and not only built West Edmonton Mall, but also provided the vision for Mall of America (SCT, May 2002).
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