America’s largest mall has been stalled for years. Could Miami-Dade help revive it?
Crews haven’t yet broken ground on what would be America’s largest mall at a 175-acre site off Interstate 75. But developers for the mega project are asking Miami-Dade County to lift an existing ban on government subsidies for the venture that launched nine years ago.
The delayed American Dream Miami project — a mall massive enough to have both an artificial ski slope and a submarine lake — once pledged to be open and employing 5,000 people by 2025. But developer Triple Five, owner of Minnesota’s Mall of America, hasn’t moved forward with final construction permits, despite winning county approval for its plans in 2018.
READ MORE: Nation’s largest mall wins Miami-Dade approval as county backs American Dream Miami
Now, Triple Five says a restriction from the original approval by the County Commission is causing problems for the project. It wants Miami-Dade to lift a 2018 restriction pushed by existing malls in the area barring the use of county dollars to subsidize the project.
“Everybody needs to be treated the same,” said Commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez, whose district includes the American Dream development site on vacant land where I-75 meets the Florida Turnpike. “It’s not about their mall so much as we need to move forward with getting roads built.”
Bermudez, a former Doral mayor who wasn’t on the commission during the 2018 American Dream vote, did not share details on what the developers want from Miami-Dade. The original agreement requires Triple Five to pay for road systems connecting the development’s property to main highways and thoroughfares.
Representatives of Triple Five did not respond to requests for comment.
MORE: Are we getting a ginormous mall with a ski slope? What to know about American Dream Miami
When first announced in 2015, the plan was to have the mall open by 2020. An agreement with Miami-Dade to purchase 82 acres of government-owned land that was approved in 2015 required Triple Five to have the site generating 5,000 jobs by 2025.
Bermudez is sponsoring legislation to cancel the 2018 restrictions that a coalition of the region’s large malls successfully lobbied to attach to the American Dream approval package. It prevents Miami-Dade from offering Triple Five most tax rebates, loans or grants to defer development costs.
On Monday, Bermudez delayed a committee hearing on lifting the ban, deferring a vote by the commission’s Policy Council committee to a future meeting.
The American Dream development package passed easily in 2018, with only one commissioner voting no: Daniella Levine Cava, now the county’s mayor.
Triple Five is now relying on the Levine Cava administration for the regulatory approvals needed to get the site approved for construction of the six-million-square-foot complex. In 2018, construction costs were estimated at $4 billion.
The years that followed became more challenging for malls as the COVID pandemic shifted more shopping online. Triple Five’s original American Dream project in New Jersey, a 3.5-million-square-foot complex in the New York suburb of East Rutherford, reported losses of $229 million in 2022 before depreciation, according to regulatory filings posted last year.
Still, a leasing report from the fall of 2023 showed the property mostly full with tenants and a roughly 90% occupancy rate.
Bermudez said after meeting with Triple Five representatives, he now expects the developer to lean more on drawing customers with things to do at American Dream Miami and relying less on giving them places to shop.
“I would presume whatever footprint they had for retail before will be smaller and entertainment will be larger,” he said. “Just because malls have changed since COVID.”
