Here’s One Mall That Has It All: It’s a $792-Million Indoor Wonderland

When it’s bedtime in your theme room at the Fantasyland Hotel, you switch off the traffic lights and climb into the back of a Ford pickup truck.

Or you can hop into a gaslit Victorian coach-bed or watch a volcano erupt on the wall while dozing off in a Polynesian catamaran.

The new $36-million hotel is another impossible dream realized by the four Ghermezian brothers, owners of West Edmonton Mall, the world’s biggest and wildest indoor shopping complex.

They are planning to bring their indoor concept to the United States in Bloomington, Minn., and possibly Niagara Falls, N.Y., where winters are as long and cold as in Canada.

Mushroomed Fantasy

The Iranian emigre developers, launched into business by their father, who sold Persian rugs in Montreal, originally planned a conventional mall with only a kiddie train for a novelty.

But after three phases of construction starting in 1980, the $792-million mall has evolved into a fantasy-fulfilled wonderland covering eight city blocks.

After checking into the 360-room Fantasyland Hotel, you can:

- Surf on six-foot waves in the Waterpark, where the temperature is 82 degrees,

- Freefall on the 13-story Daring Drop of Doom in Fantasyland amusement park,

- Watch National Hockey League star Wayne Gretzky practice with the Edmonton Oilers,

- Go to church,

- Buy a car,

- Ride in a 40-ton submarine,

- Get married on a replica of Christopher Columbus’ Santa Maria,

- Dine on Ukrainian pirogi or spicy Szechwan chicken,

- Roam through 828 stores, where you can spend $50 on a brass golf ball retriever at Abercrombie & Fitch or buy a pair of socks at Sears.

Admission Fees

There are admission fees for the 10-acre Waterpark and most other recreations. The loop roller coaster has been closed since June, when the rear car flew off the track and three people died.

The brothers, Nader, Eskandar, Raphael and Bahman Ghermezian, all in their 40s, say they reach collective decisions by exchanging ideas with each other.

Secretive about their business and private lives, they are not reticent when it comes to the shoppers’ mecca they created against initial local opposition in this western Canada oil city of 680,000.

“We call it the eighth wonder of the world,” Nader, secretary of the family’s holding company, Triple Five Corp. Ltd., said in an interview. “It’s like a domed city.

“You can have the best vacation of your life without going outside. Half the tourists who come to Edmonton are here because of our project. They come from as far as Japan and Australia.”

$561-Million Year

The mall took in $561 million in 1985, nearly double the sales elsewhere in North America for the same amount of retail space.

The 23,500 jobs generated have turned local doubters into believers. Now the Ghermezians are planning a $475-million shopping center in downtown Edmonton,

Six million tourists were expected in Edmonton in 1986, coming by charter plane and bus and driving up from the United States, 300 miles to the south.

“We have canceled our vacation to Europe so that we can visit your mega-mall,” a Columbus, Ohio, couple wrote in one of 2,000 letters the company says it gets a month from fascinated Americans.

Canada’s Lure

Initially attracted to Edmonton by oil-boom prosperity, lack of competition and a dreary seven-month winter perfect for indoor shopping, the Ghermezians have now turned their attention to the U.S. market.

They will break ground in May in Minnesota on a $468-million mall at Bloomington, with plans for later commercial and hotel phases that will out-monster Edmonton.

Approached by 34 cities in North America and Western Europe, the Ghermezians are also close to a decision on a third super mall in Niagara Falls, N.Y., or Toronto, an urban corridor of vast potential.

“Within 500 miles of the Niagara-Toronto area there are 154 million people, half the population of North America,” the company’s public affairs director, Deane Eldredge, said.

Lucrative Incentives

The brothers are leaning toward New York state because of lucrative incentives, including a site just 200 yards from Niagara Falls.

“This wouldn’t be a mega-project, it would be double-mega,” Nader Ghermezian said. But he added that economic feasibility studies were not completed. “We don’t build on glory,” he said. “It has to make sense.”

In “The Money Rustlers,” a study of self-made millionaires in the Canadian West, authors Paul Grescoe and David Cruise attributed the Ghermezians’ phenomenal growth to their skill in acquiring land cheaply and winning tax and other concessions from local governments.

“They take advantage of the tiniest loopholes to tie up deals so quickly and slickly that competitors are left gasping in their wake,” the book said.

Philanthropic Side

Nader Ghermezian also claimed a philanthropic side.

“We are a family with a social conscience,” he said.

At Edmonton, this includes donating amusement park proceeds to charity and operating a game farm to keep the mall supplied with exotic animals, which currently include black bear cubs, Siberian and Bengal tigers, emus, piranha and dolphins.

The $1.4-billion Niagara proposal envisions new delights for shoppers, such as a sports hall of fame, Chinatown, replica of London’s Piccadilly Circus and sandy volleyball courts next to the world’s largest indoor wave-lake.

The Ghermezians are also introducing their own Mall World Plus credit card and a West Edmonton Mall board game in time for Christmas. A mail-order catalogue may be next.