Quote:i hope it works. i'd go to see cirque de soleil and the acquarium....is there public transportation to the site?

Quote:

What makes you think it might? I thought that was taken off the table long ago. I remember Cabela's walked away over that issue several incarnations ago.

awful. so much money, this might signal the end of the Bergen County Blue Laws - no Sunday shopping.

if this shit hole gets a special pass for Sunday shopping all the others will follow.

Nobody wants this thing (except those that can skim some money from it)

Oh man... this sounds so illegal... like the 2008 housing derivative scam that crashed Wall Street. WI taxpayers are on the hook.

I suppose an unmarked jet will leave Teterboro Airport with a cargo bay full of this worthless paper headed to Madison.

I heard the anchor store will be Sears and KMart. I hope the WI AG looks into this money laundering scam.

Why does that city need a new police hq. Surely there are better things to do with $20 million

http://www.nj.com/bergen/index.ssf/20 ... as_2018_opening_eyed.html

A $4B mall? Price tag on Meadowlands megamall soars

The developers of the megamall in the Meadowlands have promised to make the American Dream one of the largest shopping, entertainment and tourism destinations in the world. Here's what we know about the directory, so far.

American Dream Meadowlands took a step toward securing $800 million in state-backed financing Tuesday.

The board of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority voted at a special meeting to advance a new financing plan for the megamall.

The Sports Authority had already agreed to issue $350 million in bonds on behalf of Triple Five, the developer of the mall. Under the proposed financing plan, the Sports Authority will issue another $800 million in debt.

Then, the Wisconsin Public Finance Authority would buy those bonds and sell them to the public. Tony Armlin, vice president of development for Triple Five, said using the Wisconsin agency was "an efficient way to bring bonds to market." The agency can also sell tax-exempt bonds.

The Sports Authority on Tuesday voted in favor of a resolution approving the financing plan. Triple Five will make an application to the Wisconsin Public Finance Authority later Tuesday, Armlin said.

It's one of many obstacles the developer must clear before the bonds can be sold. Before that, the company needs the OK from the Local Finance Board, East Rutherford and the Sports Authority?again. Armlin said the developer hopes the $1.1 billion in public financing can be completed by late September, shortly after another $1.5 billion in private financing is secured.

Armlin said construction costs would amount to about $2.7 billion. Triple Five has already spent $600 million in work. When the project was still called Xanadu, the state had already invested $1 billion in land, highway improvements and tax breaks, while previous developers Mills and Colony Capital spent $500 million each. Add it all up, and American Dream will have cost nearly $5 billion when it opens.

Union officials spoke out in favor of the project Tuesday. Once financing is complete, about 5,000 construction workers can resume work on the project, Rick Sabato, president of the Bergen County Building and Construction Trades Council, said.

Sabato dismissed criticism that malls elsewhere in the country are closing.

"In Bergen County, the malls are not failing," he said. "They're all putting additions on. They're all upgrading."

The commissioners of the Sports Authority voted unanimously to advance the financing plan. Commissioner Bob Yudin emphasized that taxpayers would face no risk from the bonds.

"If the project should fail, the only people at risk are the bondholders," he said.

Triple Five plans to use the money to complete the long-stalled project. The public bonds will be repaid through a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement made with East Rutherford. The agreement will see the mall pay the borough more than $150 million over 20 years, including an up-front payment of $23 million that will help pay for a new police headquarters.

They will also be repaid through a portion of sales once the mall opens. Most of the 7 percent the mall would normally pay in sales tax will instead go toward repaying up to $390 million in bonds.

Work has stalled in the Meadowlands since a delay in financing in April. Armlin said workers have done prefabrication work off-site in the meantime. There's still plenty to do, including the construction of a 15-care amusement and water park.

After the delay in financing, Armlin said he now expects American Dream to open in late summer 2018.

Quote:

Not only that the mall is just as likely to suck revenue away from the state by taking businesses from malls in the areas that actually have to pay taxes. We're built out retail wise so a good portion of entertainment dollars spent here are dollars not spent in other NJ shopping locations.

Farking cluster.

gotta love it. we can't get a needed tunnel built with the feds coughing up 75%+ of the money for it, but we can subsidize a mega shopping mall. no infrastructure, but let's pay for odes to consumerism. glorious.

Christie for President!!, Republicans around the country are clamoring for him and the people in this city rally around corrupt democrats....Really?! Fulup is better, but a Republican is needed to stop the COSTS!!

correct me it i'm wrong, but a lot of tax money, abatements, subsidies going into this project....is this where the money which used to be going to schools, elderly, public safety n infrastructure, etc now going to? How much money is state pumping into this? we don't know, since terms of the deal have not been made transparent. (sorry about the length of this post)
--------------------------------------------------------
Stucknation: Christie's Xanadu Nightmare Becomes Someone's 'American Dream'
Friday, May 06, 2011
By Bob Hennelly

A rendering of American Dream, the replacement for New Jersey's Xanadu Enlarge

You're an ambitious, high-profile Republican governor of a state in chronic budget crisis and in a nation with a sputtering recovery. The state's corrupt "pay to play" politics, left you a two-million-square-foot mall monstrosity named Xanadu that's yet to open. Its exterior is violently ugly and it is built on state land so close to the Big Apple that its value is through the roof. Worse yet, in just three years, the eyes of the world will be on the monstrosity because your brand new NFL stadium next door is hosting the Superbowl in 2014.

Who are you going to call? Who can fix this? The Air National Guard?

New Jersey Governor Chris Chrsitie dialed Triple Five, the Canadian developer of the Mall of America. The firm is a privately held, multi-faceted conglomerate owned by the the Ghermezian family, a can-do-clan of Persian Jews who left their native Iran in the 1960s for Montreal.

By 1981, they placed themselves on the mall map with the opening of their five million square foot West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, BC. They make mega malls into stand alone international tourist destinations that they say end up boosting the broader region where they are located. But invariably they also solicited some form of public subsidy and special consideration to pull it all off.

On Tuesday Gov. Christie told a crowd of reporters in the cavernous Xanadu shell that Triple Five's re-branding of the ill-fated mall as the "American Dream Meadowlands" was about more than just shopping.

?You have to give people a sense of optimism and hope that things are changing here. When we took over here in 2009 there was a real sense both in this region and across the state that this type of large-scale, private development couldn't happen again.?

Of course Christie attributes Triple 5's interest in the Meadowlands to his commitment to lower taxes and less regulation. He did sweeten the invitation with $200 million dollars in economic development aid funded by sales tax revenue from the complex once it opens. And he hopes he can get them to takeover the Sport's Authority's aging 20,000 seat Izod arena that's right next door to Xanadu.

Last summer Governor Christie told reporters that if the state extended any public subsidy to a developer to finish Xanadu he would see to it that taxpayers benefited from the deal in a tangible way. When pressed on that question at last week's Triple Five presser he said details and terms where still being worked out.

State Senator Loretta Weinberg, a Democrat from Bergen County, wants Governor Christie to release the terms of the deal and more specifics on the development itself.

?I remain concerned that this megamall development could become a nightmare for Bergen County residents and State taxpayers who will be footing the bill for needed public infrastructure improvements and development incentives for years," said Weinberg. "We ought to engage State taxpayers and local residents in a discussion of the merits and pitfalls of expanding Xanadu?s footprint, and investing more funds into an already costly development."

Christie's remarks at the "American Dream" event harkened back to a Reaganesque kind of optimism in the face of some long odds. The former Mills Corporation and than Colony Capital spent more than $2 billion dollars on Xanadu and neither could get it done.

Throughout New Jersey and the entire country, malls of every description are vacant and falling into disrepair. It's a kind of a Great Recession blight woven throughout our landscape. Bloomberg and Reuters reported that in the first quarter of this year vacancy rates at American malls were at their highest rate in a decade.

And than there's global warming and the role mallification might play in it.

To make the redo of Xanadu fly, you have to suspend the gravity of conventional wisdom with the razzle dazzle of show business At Christie's press conference there was just such a showman - Nader Ghermezian, the avuncular chairman of Triple Five now in his 70s. What he lacks in physical stature he makes up with in world-class salesmanship.

In halting dramatic voice he drew the reporters in. "Today we are proud to announce that we will be developing the world's largest and most comprehensive, retail, entertainment, amusement, recreation and tourism project ever built," said Ghermezian. "This project, by measurement, bar none does not exist anywhere."

Even though the concept of the 'shopping mall' is historically linked to the American experience these days the list if the world's ten largest malls are dominated by Asian projects.

The largest is New South China Mall in Donneguan, China at 6.46 million square feet. By comparison Triple Five's West Edmonton Mall in Alberta is 5.3 million and the company's Mall of America in Minnesota is 4.2 million square feet.

Triple Five says its ultimate build out of the complex, including the adjacent state-owned 20,000-seat Izod Center, and a possible hotel complex, will bring the total size of the project in at 7.5 million square feet, which Triple 5 says would make it the largest in the world.

In the first phase, Triple 5 is going to add another million square feet to Xanadu's existing 2 million square foot footprint. There will be a one-of-a-kind indoor amusement park under a glass dome with a view of the New York City skyline. There will be Hawaii themed water park with six foot waves, a 16-story indoor ski slope, and 26 screen movieplex.

?Half of the people that they are going to come to this projects are going to be from out of town, tourists, nationally and internationally,? said Ghermezian. He predicts the complex will draw 55 million people a year, and said his company's Mall of America in Minnesota is a well-established international destination. They offer 70 travel packages originating from 34 countries on 5 continents. Triple Five also says the project would employ almost 9,000 construction workers and create 35,000 permanent jobs.

And Ghermezian's says the prospects are even brighter with Newark Liberty Airport so close. He said Triple Five would work behind the scenes to encourage airlines to expand their Newark layover time for international flights and offer passing through tourists a way to check their bags at the Mall and have an easy link back to the airport.

Of course there were no critics at the presser. Observing it all was Captain Bill Sheehan, the Hackensack River Keeper who was glad to see some kind of progress on the moribund site. But he looked incredulous. In the age of global warming how could reporters not have asked about the impact of this mega-mall - purportedly visible from space - on the environment?

?I have some concerns about the extraordinary amount of energy this is going to use. We can?t move something like this forward thinking that it?s the 1900s,? said Sheehan.

NJ Sierra Club Chapter Director Jeff Tittel, a longtime Xanadu critic, was not invited to the rollout. By Tittel's calculation, between a $200 million dollar rail-spur and the infrastructure rebuild, the public already has $900 million invested in the mall project. He says Chrsitie's decision to sign off on something on the scale of the American Dream/Meadowlands had to be considered in the context of Christie's controversial decision to kill the rail tunnel under the Hudson between New Jersey and New York.

"The American Nightmare Mall will be the biggest source of greenhouse gasses in NJ after the Governor," said Tittel. "The Governor can give $200 -$350 Million to subsidize a mall, but will kill a mass-transit project. The irony is the tunnel could have been used to get people to the mall - now they will have to drive gridlocked Northern New Jersey. The developer should change the name to Xantac because of all the ulcers it will give to taxpayers stuck in traffic."

Triple Five spokesperson Maureen Bausch says Mall of America has a solid environmental record going back twenty years. "Our building in Minnesota was green even before it was cool to be green," she said. "We recycle over 70 percent of everything we use in that building, from the food in the food court that goes to the pig farmers, to all of our garbage."

But the environmental debate aside, what does a governor do with two million square foot white elephant? Evidently he has to find a three ring circus.

Economist James W. Hughes, Dean of the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers, was a critic of the initial public-private partnership that spawned Xanadu.

He says New Jersey is malled out. "In 1990 we had 20 square feet of retail space per capita. By 2010 it had doubled to 40 square feet. We are just an 'over stored' state and nation," said Hughes.

Dean Hughes said for the American Dream to fly with international customers boosters would have to count on a weak dollar. He concedes that if you are going to build any mall with the odds of making it it has to be the world's largest. "You would at least have a unique asset and by being unique like that it could grease the financial skids."

But Wharton Marketing Professor Steven Hock thinks Chrsitie's making a supersize mistake. Hoch says he understands Christie's political reasons to 'go bigger or go home' but says there is no business justification.

"I don't see 7.5 million square feet mall as an international draw in New Jersey. I just don't see it. There are so many other things going on," Hock says referring to the metro region's existing dynamism.

Hock predicts that if American Dream is built it will further undermine the rest of the region's retail space market. "It is just going to transfer the problem on to a whole bunch of other people," says Hock.

Well isn't that what politics is all about? What's Governor Christie supposed to do? Leave it vacant until the Superbowl as a shrine to the bankruptcy of American and global consumerism?

I guess it's appropriate that NJ would have the largest mall in America.

oh swell.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/05/0 ... ie-visits-xanadu-complex/

Quote:

Probably, but do to sweethart tax deals almost none of that money will benefit the tax payers.

how do you fix a giant white elephant? make it bigger! genius philosophy. lets hope its not 3 for 3 on wiping out investors.

I have no doubt that when Xanadu (or whatever they call it) opens it will be mobbed on a regular basis, no matter how many people claim to hate it.

Paramus in Bergen county still is, despite being closed for a full day of the week, either the highest or one of the highest grossing zip codes in the country.

As far as Xanadu is concerned, a waterpark / ski slope is I think a compelling entertainment destination, particularly given the proximity to New York City (especially now that a train line services the area and the 70% of households without a car can get out there). One of the other original bids included a full waterpark in addition to the indoor ski slopes, but was rejected.

Quote:

One word: SUPERBOWL!! They think it will reflect badly on NJ if there's this hulking abandoned mess next to the stadium in the aerial shots. I really like the tax giveaway. If most of the taxes will go to debt service, since most of those sales will be cannibalized from other NJ businesses it will not only not capture additional sales tax revenue, it will reduce the overall collections.

The Bergen blue law comment gave me a great idea, why can't the Xanadu site secede from Bergen county and join Hudson?!! It's right across the river, and surely the governor would be all for it. Then Cabela's would open their outdoors superstore there and all would right with the world.

I've never understood why anyone would open a mall in Bergen county where you lose one of the 2 biggest shopping days. Not to mention the discrimination against the sizable population of observant Jews who can't shop either weekend day.

Why the hell is the state (my tax dollars) even involved in this mall?

This is crazy.

Deal Is Reached to Revive and Expand Xanadu Project

By CHARLES V. BAGLI

The Christie administration, lenders and a new developer have reached a deal to revive the vast Xanadu entertainment and retail complex, which sits forlorn and unfinished along a stretch of New Jersey highway after having burned through two owners and $1.9 billion, people involved in the negotiations said Thursday.

The plan: make it even bigger, give it a new name and slap a new skin on the much reviled exterior walls of the 2.4-million-square-foot complex.

The new developer, the Triple Five group, will invest more than $1 billion in the seven-year-old project. And Gov. Chris Christie has agreed to provide low-interest financing and to forgo most sales tax revenue for a period of time, according to those involved in the negotiations, who declined to be named because they did not want to be seen as upstaging the governor.

They added that Triple Five, a Canada-based conglomerate owned by the Ghermezian family, would rechristen Xanadu as ?American Dream@Meadowlands.?

The company also wants to add a large indoor water park, a skating rink, a second multistory parking garage and other entertainment features that have proven successful at the company?s properties, which include North America?s two largest entertainment-retail complexes: the two-story, 5.3-million-square-foot West Edmonton Mall in Canada and the 4.2-million-square-foot Mall of America outside Minneapolis. Triple Five also intends to keep the 600-foot-long indoor ski slope already installed in Xanadu.

Although the Christie administration once described Xanadu as a ?failed business model,? the governor asked a close adviser, Jon F. Hanson, to try to resuscitate the project. The administration is offering a financing package of $180 million to $200 million, with the developer able to use most of the sales taxes they collect to repay the loan, rather than contributing the money to the state budget. The negotiations over the deal were completed at 3 a.m. Thursday.

Triple Five has until the end of the year to close on the deal.

Critics questioned why Mr. Christie, who has developed a national reputation for cost-cutting, would risk so much money on a star-crossed project.

Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, said that this kind of financing only serves to enrich the developer at the expense of taxpayers.

?At a time when the governor has taken money from renewable energy and schools, he?s bailing out an ugly mall,? Mr. Tittel said.

The governor?s office declined to comment on the agreement.

Xanadu, dormant for two years, is one of the more spectacular disasters of the speculative real estate boom that collapsed in 2008. Eight years ago, the state selected the Mills Corporation to build Xanadu on state-owned land. The plans, which included a 286-foot tall Ferris wheel, the ski slope, Legoland, theaters, concert halls, restaurants and stores. The owners were required to pay a portion of their rent, $160 million up front.

But by 2006, the project was hobbled by cost overruns and Mills was in financial trouble. Colony Capital, a private equity firm based in California, took over, adopting the original concept. Colony also suffered from delays, and in 2009 a subsidiary of the bankrupt Lehman Brothers cut off the promised construction financing. Last August, Colony?s lenders foreclosed.

To compound the problems, New Jersey residents almost universally loathed Xanadu?s exterior walls, a patchwork of stripes, checkerboards and dull color blocks, a sentiment borne out in a recent poll.

If Triple Five?s other megamalls have proven successful in far-flung locations, the company faces enormous challenges in the New York area, which is already entertainment rich and resplendent with tourist attractions, malls, stadiums, arenas and amusement parks.

?They?re betting a billion dollars that tourists will come,? said James Sullivan, a retail analyst with Green Street Advisors in Newport Beach, Calif.

The project has an ideal location at the Meadowlands Sports Complex, six miles from Times Square amid upscale communities crisscrossed by highways and accessible by train and bus.

But local blue laws prohibit retail sales on Sundays. There are additional restrictions on mall activity imposed by their neighbor, the Giants, on at least 10 game days during the football season. There is also Xanadu?s enduring history of delays and failures.

?The new owner has to convince the retail community that this time it?s for real,? said Richard Brunelli, whose company, R. J. Brunelli & Company, had represented a number of chain stores that had been interested in taking space in Xanadu years ago. ?It got off to a couple of false starts. It lost credibility. Anchor tenants are key.?

Thursday morning, Triple Five was also negotiating to buy the development rights for five separate parcels near Xanadu. Under an earlier plan, Colony and its partner, the Mack-Cali Realty Corporation, were to build a 520-room hotel and four office buildings on those parcels, but Triple Five needs the land to expand Xanadu to more Mall of America-like proportions, according to two people involved in the discussions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/nyr ... all-project-in-nj.html?hp

First off, what state money are you referring to?
You may need remedial comprehension, since if you read it the right way, it address investment from a private group that runs 'mall of America" out in the midwest.

Get you facts right and furthermore, we dont need A Tunnel project at a time when the state is broke, if you think your taxes are high now, just imagine if the state were to go through with the project.

Quote:

He's is willing to assist a project so long as the state can reap financial benefits from it, but is not willing to go along with a project that may cost the state untold Billions. Way to go, indeed. Or do you not care about the state's finances?

So Christie cuts a very necessary rail tunnel into Manhattan, but can justify using state money to waste on an aestheically unpleasing flop of a project that will still remain empty?

Way to go governor.

Quote:

This is a very funny post. You were being funny, right?

Your right it isn't ugly. It may not be your cup of tea, but that is no reason to waste money on it. And of all the visually offensive things in NJ that the governor can spend taxpayer money to fix, why a brand new building? Because it is high profile, and it's politically motivated.

The funny thing is that the building isn't ugly, it is interesting and different, and actually cleverly done to reflect the docks and containers depots around the area.

far more ugly are the enormous advertsing hoardings surrounding the area, including the massive "IZOD" sign.

Robin.

Gov. promises facelift to NJ's 'ugliest' building

By BETH DeFALCO
Associated Press
Thu Mar 24, 5:46 pm

NUTLEY, N.J. ? Gov. Chris Christie wants a longtime New Jersey eyesore to get a makeover.

Calling it the ugliest building in New Jersey, and possibly America, Christie said Thursday that any deal to finish developing a troubled multibillion-dollar retail and entertainment complex at the Meadowlands will have to include a new exterior.

Late last year, Triple Five, which owns the Mall of America in Minnesota and the West Edmonton Mall in Canada, signed a letter of intent with lenders to complete the development of the "Xanadu" complex and possibly expand it.

Located about 10 miles west of New York City, next to the Izod Center and across a highway from the $1.6 billion New Meadowlands Stadium that is slated to host the 2014 Super Bowl, the decor of the complex has been a source of curiosity for motorists traveling the New Jersey Turnpike.
At a town hall event Thursday, Christie said the first thing that must be done is change the multicolored, multi-patterned exterior.

"They have to change the God-awful ugly outside of that building. It is just an offense to the eyes as you drive up the turnpike," Christie told the crowd, which responded with a cheer.

The decor, which cost an estimated $40 million, has been a source of curiosity for motorists on the turnpike and a joke for late-night comedians.

Christie said the exterior was a reminder of the project's failure, asking: "How didn't everybody understand that something that ugly would fail?"

The project has had more than just cosmetic problems.
The sprawling $2 billion complex originally was projected to open in late 2007. It was supposed to feature shops, an indoor snow dome, a movie complex, bowling alley, restaurants and an upscale martini bar. But as financing fell through, it remained empty, with its most noticeable feature being its exterior.

Creditors took over Xanadu in August, after original lead developer Mills Corp. ran into financial problems and was replaced as general managing partner in early 2007 by Los Angeles-based Colony Capital Acquisitions.

Triple Five and the governor's office are in negotiations to start development, and a possible expansion. Christie said he hopes to have an announcement on the project this spring.

Christie has backed findings of a panel studying the state's gaming, sports and entertainment industries that determined $875 million was needed to finish the Xanadu and recommended the state help find some money to complete it, likely in the form of tax-exempt bonds. But, on Thursday the governor said there would be a caveat to using any state money on the project; the state wants a piece of the equity.

"If they want a state investment, we get a piece of the action," Christie said.

Bloomfield resident Charles Thompson, who came to the town hall event, said he didn't agree with Christie on a lot of things, but was thrilled to hear him mention that Xanadu was getting a makeover.

"He's right about that," said the 58-year-old Thompson. "Paint it white, or black, just do something!"

Christie promised that the exterior would be the first thing worked on, even if construction inside remains unfinished.
"I can't take it anymore," Christie said, "and neither can the people of New Jersey."

The state should give it to Disney and let Mickey Mouse work his magic!

We have enough malls. Although the governor believes there is something salvageable, I would rather see it turned back into a wetlands area. There is no market for anything else at this time in the current economy.