Word: ghermezian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1986-1986
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...prototype of the Ghermezian consumer center is the West Edmonton Mall, a $750 million garden of retail delights located 350 miles north of the Canada-U.S. border. Far and away the world's largest shopping mall, the sprawling indoor complex is crammed with 836 stores, 110 restaurants, 20 movie theaters and a 360-room hotel. Covering 5.2 million sq. ft., or the equivalent of 108 U.S. football fields, the West Edmonton Mall is twice the size of North America's runner-up shopping mall, the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, Calif. The dimensions loom even more impressively...
Nonetheless, more than 100,000 people a day, as many as 40% of them from the U.S., travel to the Edmonton complex, and with good reason. The Ghermezian mall contains a mammoth amusement park, with entry free of charge. Fully integrated into the retail complex, it comes complete with roller coasters and carrousels (47 rides in all). The mall also boasts an 18-hole miniature golf course and a $5 million hockey rink where Superstar Wayne Gretzky practices with the Edmonton Oilers. The center's Waterpark sports a 600-ft. water slide and a 2.5-acre artificial lake featuring...
...Ghermezian approach is indisputably successful. Sales revenues for the complex last year totaled $560 million. That take is the equivalent of $280 per sq. ft. of retail space, which is twice the rate of a typical U.S. retail outlet...
...Ghermezian retailing spectacular is already sprouting a U.S. branch. The brothers will break ground next spring on another consumer kingdom, planned to be twice the size of the West Edmonton Mall, in Bloomington, Minn. The Ghermezians are also encouraging a bidding war for a third development, to be erected near either Toronto or Niagara Falls. Says Brother Nader: "The final choice will depend upon which is most anxious to have us." New York is definitely eager. The state has offered the Ghermezians a free 100-acre site for the project just 200 yds. from the falls, a low-interest...
Shrewd negotiating tactics are a familiar part of the Ghermezian success story. The family gained a North American toehold when Patriarch Jacob Ghermezian, now 86, moved to Montreal from Tehran in 1959. The family began selling Oriental rugs door to door, then opened a Montreal retail outlet, which within five years blossomed into a chain of 17 stores. The leap to real estate came in the 1960s, when the Ghermezians began snapping up land in Edmonton for as little as $100 an acre while the oil boom got under way and later sold some of the property...