Owner Of American Dream Missed Two Mortgage Payments: Reports

SECAUCUS, NJ — The owner of American Dream mega-mall has missed two mortgage payments to the bank, according to a June 2 report in the Bergen Record and CNBC.

American Dream is owned by Triple Five (the Ghermezian family), the same family that owns Mall of America in Minnesota.

In fact, Triple Five put up Mall of America as collateral to take out a loan for American Dream, according to the news reports.

Triple Five missed two payments for its $1.4 billion mortgage for Mall of America. The bank that owns the mortgage, Wells Fargo, confirmed to the Bergen Record that Triple Five missed its April and May payments.

It is an incredibly tough time to be in the mall business, much less open a brand-new mall. American Dream just opened last fall, but only in a tentative fashion: Only the Nickelodeon theme park and indoor ski mountain opened.

In fact, many of American Dream's store spaces had not even been rented and much of the mall was vacant even while families flocked to the theme park. American Dream was able to get one large-scale retailer in, European discount store Primark, and they were set to open this spring. But Primark had to suspend operations due to the pandemic.

Neither American Dream or Mall of America have reopened yet.

Triple Five CEO Don Ghermezian told CNBC in April: “The difficulty we are going though now ... if tenants don’t want to pay rent, my response is: ‘I have got to pay a mortgage. I borrowed money. I have got to pay back my lenders.’”