American Dream Miami mega-mall expects October
The backers of the American Dream Miami mega-mall in Northwest Miami-Dade County predict that the County Commission will approve their concept in October, said Robert Gorlow, an attorney for the complex.
He and Edgar Jones, a development consultant for the entertainment and shopping mall, spoke at Friday’s meeting of the Realtors Commercial Alliance, part of the Miami Association of Realtors.
“The county thinks we’re going too fast, but they’re okay with it,” Mr. Gorlow said. “We want to move fast, because plans get stale otherwise.”
Though some individuals have concerns, the county commission and several neighborhood groups have given it their preliminary approvals, he said.
The $4 billion project is set to open in 2022-23, Mr. Jones said. It’s been in the planning stages since 2013 and comprises 7.2 million square feet that are to include restaurants, stores, 2,000 hotel rooms, a walk-through aquarium, an indoor ski slope, water park, movie complex and more.
It is a project of Triple Five Worldwide, which also developed the West Edmonton Mall in Canada and Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. In about 18 months, Triple Five Worldwide will open American Dream Metropolitan New York in the New Jersey Meadowlands, Mr. Gorlow said.
It’s estimated that American Dream Miami will receive 40 million annual visitors and create 14,500 permanent jobs. The developers have agreed to add two highway interchanges that will open three years before the mall does, and a major transportation center has been included in the project, Mr. Gorlow said. “We applied to [the Florida Department of Transportation] two years before we applied to the county,” he added.
The parking garages are designed so that they can be converted to other uses if cars become outmoded. The mammoth project is also designed for sea-level rise, driverless cars and other trends, he said.
“It was hard to put together 80 acres,” Mr. Jones said, some of which was owned by the state, Miami-Dade Public Schools, the Graham family and private owners. He gave Mr. Gorlow credit for pulling the deal together.
Most of the opposition to the project, Mr. Gorlow said, has come from owners of older, more traditional malls who don’t want to compete with American Dream’s entertainment options, which might end up comprising 60% of the project.
Harry E. Gottlieb
May 17, 2017 at 12:20 pm
There is no need for another Mall, especially since present Malls are not doing so well because online companies like Amazon.com are cleaning their clocks. This new Mall will only benefit the developer, those commissioners that receive his re-election funds and the gasoline stations that will be supplying fuel for the commuters that will be stuck in traffic jams for hours.
Afi Keita James
May 19, 2017 at 12:37 pm
It’s more than just a mall.
IK
May 21, 2017 at 4:45 pm
American dream miami is going to be very beautiful with an indoor ski slope and no snow in miami it will be great for south florida
Wesley Keen
May 22, 2017 at 3:46 pm
Miami-Dade county should require the developer either privately or a private/public joint venture to bring either heavy or light rail to the western suburbs as a stipulation for approval. 40 million annual visitors, not to mention the 15,000 or so permanent jobs equals (not doing the math) a HUGE increase in daily traffic on surrounding highways. At the least they should make the developer pay a percentage profits/taxes to SMART plan transit initiative.
Luis Jota
June 1, 2017 at 3:06 am
Here’s a real whopper: “Most of the opposition to the project, Mr. Gorlow said, has come from owners of older, more traditional malls..”??? Total lie. Most of the opposition is coming from the tens of thousands of residents who live in the already-severely-congested northwest Dade County area and don’t want to be buried with 70,000 additional car trips PER DAY on their roads (that’s the mall’s traffic study numbers, not mine). There is a petition against this projectwith almost 1000 signatures total (online and paper combined), and I invite everyone to go to it and read the comments left by the people signing it: https://www.change.org/p/miami-dade-county-board-of-county-commissioners-say-no-to-the-proposed-american-dream-mall/c?source_location=petition_show
You will see page after page of people citing impossible traffic, the futility of opening a mega retail center as brick-and-mortar retail lies dying all around us, the inevitable use of public funds to clean up this project’s mess, the added crime, and the simple non-essential nature of such a project in South Florida. If this thing is passed, it will be the most colossal failure the county has ever seen. It will be busy for the first few years, until all the residents in the area have been there once or twice. Then, it will suffer the fate of every other mall and non-theme-park entertainment complex that has ever opened down here. The only good thing is, the cost of demolishing it will be astronomical, so they’ll probably never build anything in that place ever again after this thing fails. Idiot developers will keep this area in a constant state of boom and bust unless wise city/county planning starts happening. I know that’s expecting a lot in Dade County… 😉
Joe
June 22, 2017 at 8:16 am
Your petitions won’t do a thing. They tried it with the All Aboard Florida and the project is almost done. Sorry Charlie
Miami Roofer
June 12, 2017 at 10:54 pm
Miami definitely will be able to use another “entertainment” venue. We hope as small businesses this offers us more opportunity.