American Dream sours for owners of US mega-mall amid ‘significant’ cash crisis

American Dream sours for owners of US mega-mall amid ‘significant’ cash crisis

The owner of the American Dream, the New Jersey mega-mall once billed as the future of retail, has put up nearly half of the ownership of its two largest malls to secure fresh finances for the hubristically named project.JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and other investors are set to take a 49% stake in two other mall behemoths, Mall of America in Minnesota and the West Edmonton Mall in Canada, after their owner, Triple Five Group, defaulted on a loan for the long-troubled New Jersey project.The deal will be used as collateral for borrowing $1.2bn in construction loans.In March last year, just five months after it opened, American Dream was forced to shut its doors in March as Covid-19 surged in the US. It stayed closed until October, when some of its attractions and stores reopened.The 3m-sq-ft mall was slated to be a litmus test for the future of brick-and-mortar shopping at a time when Amazon and online retail are taking an ever larger share of retail sales. Shopping was supposed to be just a fraction of the American Dream experience. The complex, a 30-minute drive from Manhattan, was supposed to house cinemas, restaurants, hotels and multiple theme parks, with multiple