Minneapolis Super-Mall to Open in Late Summer : Retailing: Its backers say it will draw more people than the Disney parks. But many worry if it will generate enough shopping to succeed.

More steel than the Eiffel Tower. More than 2.5 million cubic feet of concrete. Rivaling the world’s tallest office building in floor space.

Welcome to Mall of America. With 400-plus stores, 14 movie theaters, seven restaurants and five nightclubs, it’s soon to become the nation’s largest shopping mall. A veritable $70-million amusement park.

There’s one big question: Will it succeed?

Other shopping and tourist spots are struggling, but Mall of America hopes to thrive by offering everything--and they mean everything-- in a 4.2-million-square-foot biosphere.

When it opens Aug. 1, the mall’s sheer size will “allow families to spend an entire vacation under a single roof,” its promoters say, while folks in the neighborhood stop by for VCRs and sneakers.

“I think you could best compare it to a city,” said Maureen Hooley, spokeswoman for the mall’s developers.

But retail industry watchers believe that the mall’s size could scare away people who have only a short shopping list. Some wonder if it’s enough of a tourist attraction to compete with the Disneys of the amusement world.

Then there’s the timing.

The mall was planned during the go-go ‘80s, but it took so long to build it was still going up when the economy started going down. Barring a quick turnaround, the ribbon cutting will come amid the Twin Cities’ worst retail climate in almost 20 years.

“It’s a very risky project,” said Sid Doolittle, a partner with Chicago-based retail strategist McMillan Doolittle. “I would guess that being on the edge of a recession when it opens, it increases the risk.”

A project of Triple Five Corp. of Edmonton, Alberta, the mall was to be the world’s largest, surpassing Triple Five’s West Edmonton Mall.

But the Minneapolis mall, which survived the bankruptcy of two anchor, or major, tenants and the deaths of two construction workers, has had to modify its design to comply with fire codes and financial reality. It eliminated 1 million square feet and held off on peripherals, such as hotels and a monorail to the nearby Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Melvin Simon & Associates, an Indianapolis developer that joined the project in 1987, is credited with making it more appealing to U.S. retailers.

Melvin Simon, the person, also dabbles in movies--his production company put out “Porky’s”--and he owns, with his brother Herbert, the Indiana Pacers of the National Basketball Assn.

Reality hit the mall’s main tenants in early 1990, when Federated Department Stores Inc., parent of Bloomingdale’s, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It emerged from court protection last month, just after R. H. Macy & Co. Inc. went into Chapter 11.

Hooley says neither bankruptcy was a matter of concern for the mall.

“It should be,” Doolittle said. “The smaller tenants have to see enough strength in the anchor tenants to make it worthwhile for them.”

But Whitney Peyton, a vice president of CB Commercial, said the mall’s deal with Bloomingdale’s was “so sweet that the bankruptcy court said, ‘Go ahead.’ ”

The mall expects to attract 40 million visitors annually by 1996--more than Disney World, Hooley said--with sales of $650 million in the first year and $1 billion by 1996.

Macy’s says it still plans to be an anchor.

Meanwhile, Hooley says the mall is 70% leased, not including nearly 1 million square feet committed to the four anchors, which include Nordstrom and Sears.

“We’re here for the duration,” she said. “Not the recession.”