March 10th, 2009
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#1
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Member
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Top End Australia
Posts: 282
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The Last Shopping Mall?
Quote:
The Last Shopping Mall? New Jersey Awaits Xanadu
Slated to open in August, Xanadu, a wannabe shopping paradise, will be a 2.4 million-sq.-ft. retail and entertainment complex located 3½ miles from the Empire State Building, across the Hudson River at the intersection of the New Jersey Turnpike and two heavily trafficked state roads through which 88 million vehicles pass each year.
Across the state, the project has taken a rightful beating for its exterior. The Meadowlands location isn't scenic — it's surrounded by weedy wetlands, decrepit factories, shipping containers and railroads — and Xanadu's developers spent $2 billion on what seems like the most hideous spot on the lot. "It's basically a lot of junk," says former New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne, for whom the basketball area at the Meadowlands was once named (it's now the Izod Center). "I drive by with friends and we're embarrassed." (See pictures of the world's longest yard sale.)
You've got to give the developers some credit for their tenaciousness. But this massive project, the most expensive shopping mall ever built in the U.S., has a more serious problem than its tacky exterior: the doors will open smack in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression.
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I wonder when Americans will be invited to bail this one out?
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