American Dream, New Jersey
Apr. 22nd, 2021 07:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingTrue to my ambition to visit abandoned malls in New Jersey once I got vaccinated, I went to the American Dream mall yesterday afternoon.
It's right across the river from Manhattan on a gargantuan plot of land that's been in development since 2001 or so. Basically, working with various developers, the state of New Jersey has been trying to create an attraction that will convince people to spend the night in a hotel in New Jersey instead of New York. I don't think the time it's taken to complete the project is unreasonable given its scale, but the amount of money involved is in the tens of billions of dollars. (Donald Trump himself defaulted on a development loan for this project, in fact.) What finally happened is that Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, put hundreds of millions of dollars of yearly subsidies into the project, which allowed it to schedule an opening in early 2020... and then the pandemic hit.
Parts of the mall are still under construction, and not all of its retail spaces are occupied, but it's now open to the public. It is very new and very shiny. The pure white walls and floors gleam under soft white light, and there are fresh-cut flowers and public art everywhere. The empty storefronts and closed-off corridors are hidden by paneling covered in unique and gorgeous graphics, and there are all sorts of interesting pieces of modern furniture in the atriums. The soap in the bathrooms is high-quality foam that smells like angels and puppies.
What makes this mall unique is that it also has a snowboarding hill, an ice skating rink, two mini golf courses, a Nickelodeon-branded theme park for little kids, and a huge and beautiful DreamWorks-branded water park in a huge and beautiful tropical biodome. There are a few other attractions that are still getting set up, like an aquarium that looks like it's going to fit the aesthetic of being huge and beautiful and heavily themed in an offbeat artistic way that appeals to younger kids. If I understand the map correctly, the aquarium will have a giant ocean tunnel that will let you walk through a fantasy of a postapocalyptic underwater New York City, which is a bit morbid but still pretty cool.
The shopping seems to be relatively upscale, and the anchor stores are European and East Asian, not American. It's not open yet, but there's going to be an H-Mart in the basement, which I think is probably a nod to the East Asian retail practice of having fancy groceries in department stores. I read that the mall is also going to have a "luxury wing," but it's not open yet. It looks like they're probably going to charge for parking in the future, but right now it's free.
And this entire place is completely empty. Just, completely empty. Except for a skeleton crew of retail employees at the stores and a few maintenance staff tending to the plants and flowers, there's no one there. I have an entire camera reel of prime "abandoned mall photos," and they're surreal. American Dream looks like how I imagine the international terminal of an airport during an apocalypse. Like, very shiny and modern and clean, but totally empty.
So did I buy anything in this mall? No, of course not. Don't be silly. I don't have money. I just came to poke at a strange and bloated undead corpse of capitalism, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
It's right across the river from Manhattan on a gargantuan plot of land that's been in development since 2001 or so. Basically, working with various developers, the state of New Jersey has been trying to create an attraction that will convince people to spend the night in a hotel in New Jersey instead of New York. I don't think the time it's taken to complete the project is unreasonable given its scale, but the amount of money involved is in the tens of billions of dollars. (Donald Trump himself defaulted on a development loan for this project, in fact.) What finally happened is that Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, put hundreds of millions of dollars of yearly subsidies into the project, which allowed it to schedule an opening in early 2020... and then the pandemic hit.
Parts of the mall are still under construction, and not all of its retail spaces are occupied, but it's now open to the public. It is very new and very shiny. The pure white walls and floors gleam under soft white light, and there are fresh-cut flowers and public art everywhere. The empty storefronts and closed-off corridors are hidden by paneling covered in unique and gorgeous graphics, and there are all sorts of interesting pieces of modern furniture in the atriums. The soap in the bathrooms is high-quality foam that smells like angels and puppies.
What makes this mall unique is that it also has a snowboarding hill, an ice skating rink, two mini golf courses, a Nickelodeon-branded theme park for little kids, and a huge and beautiful DreamWorks-branded water park in a huge and beautiful tropical biodome. There are a few other attractions that are still getting set up, like an aquarium that looks like it's going to fit the aesthetic of being huge and beautiful and heavily themed in an offbeat artistic way that appeals to younger kids. If I understand the map correctly, the aquarium will have a giant ocean tunnel that will let you walk through a fantasy of a postapocalyptic underwater New York City, which is a bit morbid but still pretty cool.
The shopping seems to be relatively upscale, and the anchor stores are European and East Asian, not American. It's not open yet, but there's going to be an H-Mart in the basement, which I think is probably a nod to the East Asian retail practice of having fancy groceries in department stores. I read that the mall is also going to have a "luxury wing," but it's not open yet. It looks like they're probably going to charge for parking in the future, but right now it's free.
And this entire place is completely empty. Just, completely empty. Except for a skeleton crew of retail employees at the stores and a few maintenance staff tending to the plants and flowers, there's no one there. I have an entire camera reel of prime "abandoned mall photos," and they're surreal. American Dream looks like how I imagine the international terminal of an airport during an apocalypse. Like, very shiny and modern and clean, but totally empty.
So did I buy anything in this mall? No, of course not. Don't be silly. I don't have money. I just came to poke at a strange and bloated undead corpse of capitalism, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
