For Immediate Release
Contact: Jeff Tittel, NJ Sierra Club, 609-558-9100
The American Dream Mall in East Rutherford, NJ has announced that it will reopen on October 1st, even though Governor Murphy has permitted indoor amusements to reopen as of the beginning of September. Visitors to the mall will be required to wear face coverings. Touchless programming and plexiglass barriers will help ensure social distancing.
“Once again, the American Dream Mall is delayed. We have been hearing this for almost 2 decades. What a surprise that there’s another delay. They won’t be opening until October, a whole month after malls are allowed to open in New Jersey. This is only a partial opening, with many of the stores and attractions still under construction. The developer Triple Five has already been hit by four financial problems this year alone, including almost defaulting on their mortgage for Mall of America which is collateral for American Dream,” said Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “This is a pattern with them, it’s not just the coronavirus that closed the mall and caused the problems. Malls have been going out of style for years. Retail is changing dramatically because of the coronavirus, so there’s no guarantee that this mall will pay back all the public funding it has received.”
Triple Five, the developer of the American Dream Mall, has faced multiple financial problems this year. They missed two monthly mortgage payments for Mall of America in Minnesota earlier this year, which is concerning because 49% interest in Mall of America and another Triple Five property has been pledged as collateral for the American Dream Mall. They just came to an agreement with lenders to avoid foreclosure on Mall of America at the end of August. During the shutdown, they laid off 100 employees and owed $13 million dollars to contractors.
“This is the wrong project in the wrong place at the wrong time. For 20 years, this mall has seen one calamity after another. It has been a massive waste of money backed by New Jersey taxpayer funds. Now the opening is delayed an extra month. The owners have already faced four financial problems this year alone,” said Tittel. “During the pandemic they laid off about 100 employees and owed $13 million to contractors. They also just dodged another financial crisis by cutting a deal to avoid foreclosure on the Mall of America, which is collateral for American Dream. If they had defaulted on that mortgage it would have affected the financing for American ream, which would have affected the financing that New Jersey has put up.”
The American Dream/Xanadu mega-mall is the largest public subsidized development project in state history. The project received $350 million in direct state subsidies from EDA plus another $800 million for financing including $100 million for road improvements, bringing it up to $1.5 billion project.
“This project should be called the American Nightmare because it keeps getting worse. Every time there’s a problem with this mega mall, they make it bigger and throw more public money at it. This mall is jinxed, and unfortunately it is on state-owned land and financed with public money. We have backed this project with $1.2 billion of public money that could have been used for building schools, taking lead out of drinking water, or cleaning up our sites,” said Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “We should really call them the American Scheme for all of the subsidies and money and loans that they got out of New Jersey taxpayers.”