Is it true that Las Vegas will soon have the largest shopping mall in the world?
Triple Five, the mall developer that brought us the Mall of America near Minneapolis and the West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, Alberta (the current largest mall in the world), is planning to build the Great Mall of Las Vegas at the northwest intersection of US 95 and I-215.
Ground has yet to be broken, but Triple Five claims already to have the major retailers lined up for the Great Mall of Las Vegas: Dillard's, JC Penney, Sears, and Robinson-May; a large Regal Cinema is also planned. The current schedule is to open the mall sometime in 2008.
The West Edmonton Mall has more than 800 stores and services, plus 100 eating establishments, and indoor amusement and water parks, and an ice-skating arena. It covers 5.3 million square feet, the equivalent of 48 square city blocks. The 1.5-million-square-foot Great Mall of Las Vegas will, thus, start out 3.8 million square feet smaller than the West Edmonton Mall, but wait. The WEM was built in four phases over nearly 20 years, so it's eminently conceivable that the GMLV, in the year 2028, could have overtaken it in size.
