Sorry, but I could not resist the title and making one last comment about what I believe to be the biggest shopping center disaster in the country and the second biggest in the world!
Even though the GLG reader does not see this as an opportunity to invest, it is worth bringing to your attention as an object lesson in what not to do in real estate investing. It is made even more relevant because it sits in the back yard of all you New York analysts and followers of the retail and shopping center industries.
Ever since the Ghermazian family, (the Canadian owners of the Triple Five Group) announced that they had reached agreement with the New Jersey government to borrow $400 million in state funds to resurrect and expand the Xanadu Meadowlands project, speculation has been rampant about how these guys would turn straw into gold when so many smart American developers have fallen by the wayside.
Everyone seems to have forgotten that $1.9 Billion has already been spent on creating what is clearly the least necessary collection of retail and/or entertainment uses I have ever seen in my 40 + years of close encounters with the real estate and retailing industries.
Not only is the project not needed, it is situated in what is probably the most over stored and over retailed trade area in the U.S. Nowhere else can you find the concentration of malls, shopping centers, department stores and discount stores within a 10 mile radius as you find surrounding the Meadowlands.
Now Triple Five, the family that brought you the Edmonton Mall and together with the Simon Company, brought you the Mall of America, (neither of which has ever or is ever likely to generate a reasonable return on the investment necessary to develop and maintain these gigantic properties) if they can raise another #600 million by 12/30/11, thinks that by throwing another billion at this mess, can rebuild, retenant and reopen this disaster.
It will be interesting to watch what I predict will be a slow motion train wreck.
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