LibGuides: Mall of America: Overview

Overview

In his final term as Governor of Minnesota, Rudy Perpich set out to extend the economic fortunes of the state by bringing the world to Minnesota. The Mall of America was one of several means to that end and followed on other projects that he led: the establishment of the World Trade Center in St. Paul, a state visit by Russian Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, and the selection of the Twin Cities as the Super Bowl venue in 1992. The Mall of America opened in 1992 on land formerly occupied by the Metropolitan Sports Arena and Met Stadium, the original home of the Minnesota Twins baseball team. At that time, the "Mall" was the second largest shopping and entertainment complex on the continent, exceeded in size only by the Edmonton Mall in Canada, both having been developed by the Triple Five Group, Ltd., a company of five brothers of the Ghermezian family. The Mall of America, covering about 2.7 million square feet, is seven times the size of Yankee Stadium and is located in Bloomington, Minnesota, at the intersection of Interstate 494 and Highway 77, near the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. In its early years, customers from abroad took advantage of one-day shopping excursions promoted cooperatively by the Mall and the airlines.

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