New Jersey Drama Happens in Malls. Now Its Biggest Stage Is Set

(Bloomberg) -- The American Dream mall is engineered as a 2.9 million-square-foot spectacle that includes amusement parks, an ice rink and even a ski slope. But can it top the Easter Bunny brawl?

New Jersey malls are stages for dramas big and small. A future president’s son proposed in one; an angry parent clobbered a man dressed as the holiday mascot in another. One town renamed itself for a shopping center, dumping a name that dated to 1844. Woodbridge Center and Menlo Park turn up in Junot Diaz’s Pulitzer-winning “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” And just this week, a mother brought her 17-year-old to Quaker Bridge Mall for a Cinnabon to celebrate a driver’s license.

On Friday, American Dream, a $5 billion behemoth, will partially open eight miles (13 kilometers) west of Manhattan, giving Garden State residents a new set on which to play out their lives. When fully running next year, its 450 shops and restaurants, plus amusement parks, indoor ice rink and ski areas, will make it among the biggest U.S. retail destinations.

Planning started more than 17 years ago, but construction setbacks had left the site half-finished amid the former dumps and swamps, its garish multicolored exterior a beacon for ridicule alongside the New Jersey Turnpike. The building has a sleek new look, but the aesthetic insult lives in memory, as does current skepticism about location, long-term viability in the Amazon Age and operating hours restricted by longstanding local laws meant to encourage church attendance.

“I looked at it almost like a freak show when it was under construction,” said retail historian Michael Lisicky. “This is the American dream, having what looks like a dog’s breakfast in the middle of the Meadowlands, that is of questionable ecological health? Then topping it off with a retail component closed on Sundays?”

The allure of New Jersey malls, however, transcends shopping. Filmmakers understand their dramatic -- and comedic -- potential. Jersey native and director Kevin Smith based some of his films on local malls. The movie character Paul Blart, played by Kevin James, harvested lowbrow laughs as a New Jersey rent-a-cop who tools around on a Segway.

A 1994 state Supreme Court ruling validated their stitching in the cultural fabric, saying malls had replaced parks and town squares, “traditionally the home of free speech.”

Of course, most visits involve less weighty pursuits.

“We’d go, my friend Julie and I, in her little BMW to meet rich boys,” said Pam Sasso, a 49-year-old Bridgewater secretary, recalling teenage hours at the Mall at Short Hills, a luxury shopping magnet in Millburn. “Were we successful meeting boys? No.”

Some rich boys have been found there. In 2004, Donald Trump Jr. wanted a special spot to propose marriage and chose Short Hills, where the jewelry store Bailey, Banks, & Biddle provided a diamond ring for free -- and the paparazzi arrived in droves. Alas, the marriage, to Vanessa Haydon, hit the rocks. The store closed and left Short Hills amid bankruptcy.

Now, Short Hills has lost Saks Fifth Avenue to American Dream, for the department store’s only New Jersey location.

The East Rutherford complex, built with the help of $390 million in state incentives, plus $1.1 billion in tax-exempt bonds, is opening as U.S. retail is on a long decline amid a boom in online shopping led by Amazon.com. Bergen County, which forbids retailing on Sundays, will keep shopping areas closed then, though amusement and dining venues will be open.

To get there, patrons must brave some of the most congested U.S. highways, competing with commuters and crowds bound for the Meadowlands harness racetrack and the adjacent MetLife Stadium, home to the National Football League’s Jets and Giants. Then, they’ll have to pay to park.

That’s enough to dissuade Robert Kugler, a 46-year-old author and publisher from Virginia who frequents his shore vacation home in New Jersey, where he grew up.

“I can’t think of a reason I’d ever go to East Rutherford ever again in my life unless I was going to see the Eagles play,” Kugler said.

As a teenager, Kugler frequented Quaker Bridge Mall in Lawrence Township, common ground for private-school kids like himself. These days, he said, his twin 14-year-olds “are making lists for their birthday right now and it’s all on Amazon.”

American Dream’s owner, Canada-based Triple Five Group, says it’s confident that its tenant mix, 55% entertainment and 45% retail, will weather consumers’ increasing preference for online shopping. Many of its amusements, Triple Five says, will be the biggest or first of their kind in North America.

“What the new mall is trying to be is a spectacle -- a number of different spectacles,” said George Ritzer, a University of Maryland sociology professor who coined the term “cathedrals of consumption.”

New Jersey malls have rarely needed help in the spectacle department. In 2016, a costumed Easter Bunny at the Newport Centre in Jersey City was smacked down by an irate parent waiting for keepsake photos. The brawl, a YouTube sensation, led to criminal charges for both rabbit and parent, and an onlooker’s deathless commentary: “Oh, the Easter Bunny throwin’ hands!”

Incidents like that, plus a basic distaste for shopping, turn off Lauren Gellman, 52, a cookie-shop owner from Hopewell. Still, she and her 17-year-old daughter, Audrey, visited Quaker Bridge on Tuesday to celebrate a milestone. Audrey had passed her driver’s license test, and the go-to spot was the food court for a Cinnabon.

“She’s making fun of me because I’m sitting here on my phone ordering from Amazon,” Lauren Gellman said of her daughter.

New Jersey malls will never be without such scenes, according to Lisicky, the historian.

Lisicky, 55, grew up in what had been Delaware Township, New Jersey, a wealthy Philadelphia suburb. But when the Cherry Hill Shopping Center opened on the main drag, putting the town on the regional retail map, homeowners recognized that the name invoked a new prestige. Delaware Township changed its name to Cherry Hill in 1961.

“You’ve got to love these quirks of New Jersey,” Lisicky said. “Maybe American Dream is going to be one of those quirks.”

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Merelman at smerelman@bloomberg.net, Stacie Sherman

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