Jacob Ghermezian; Built World’s Largest Mall

Jacob Ghermezian, 97, patriarch of the Canadian development company that built the world’s largest shopping mall, in Edmonton, Alberta. Ghermezian, originally from Azerbaijan, established a carpet export business in the Iranian capital of Tehran before immigrating to Montreal in the 1950s. He quickly formed a rug business called Ghermezian Bros., building it into a 16-store chain that operated mainly in the United States. In the early 1960s, he launched his four sons in the land development business and moved the family to Edmonton, where they opened Triple Five Corp. and began amassing land. In 1981, the Ghermezians opened the West Edmonton Mall, billed as the world’s largest shopping and entertainment complex, with 800 stores, a hotel, an amusement park, a full-size skating rink and a dolphin attraction. The family firm later built the largest mall in the United States, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., and owns development projects in Seattle, San Jose and Arizona. The elder Ghermezian, like his sons, was notoriously publicity-shy, but he made daily tours of the Edmonton mall and would often stop to pick up trash. A devout Orthodox Jew, he lived with his sons and their families in two closely guarded houses in a posh Edmonton neighborhood overlooking the North Saskatchewan River. On Jan. 3 after a brief illness, in Edmonton.