Vinoteca, a wine bar and restaurant that features an automated dispensing machine that pours flavors of … [+] 64 different wines, is one of the vendors in the new American Dream Food Hall.
American Dream Mall, the $5 billion retail bet in the New Jersey Meadowlands, finally appears to be reaching critical mass after the pandemic and skepticism about the project delayed efforts to fill its more than 3 million square feet of leasable space with tenants.
The megamall’s current financial woes don’t seem to be stopping it from attracting new tenants and opening new attractions. Recent announcements and lease openings indicate that momentum may be turning in the mall’s favor, nearly three years after it opened to the public.
This week the mall hit a long-delayed milestone: the opening of The Food Hall at American Dream. While the Food Hall is much smaller than the culinary experience originally envisioned for the project, it’s another sign that the mall’s developers are moving closer to fulfilling their promise of an entirely different mall experience.
The 10,000-square-foot Food Hall, with just five vendors ready to serve on opening day, and two more slated to open in the coming months, is about a quarter the size of the sprawling Vice Media and Hall themed food from Munchie, the mall’s developers. he had previously announced that the American Dream was being hit by long construction delays and a pandemic. But it offers a different kind of dining experience in the mall: a food court designed for adults and foodies alike.
The most unusual feature of the Food Hall currently is Vinoteca, an automated wine tasting bar that allows guests to pay by the ounce to taste 64 different bottles using a machine that dispenses 1 ounce, 3 ounce and 5 ounce. Vinoteca also sells Italian small plate options like paninis and charcuterie boards.
The Food Hall space has couches and conversation areas, as well as places to play oversized Jenga and Connect 4 games, a foosball table, video games, and artificial turf set up for cornhole games. Other food vendors now open are Best Pizza; Vanessa’s Dumpling House, which sells Beijing-style dumplings and other Asian foods; New York dessert shop Lady M, known for its mille crepe cakes; and the Van Leeuwen artisanal ice cream stand.
View of the Vinoteca wine tasting dispenser in the American Dream Food Hall.
The Dream Bar, described as “an intriguing cocktail bar,” is slated to open this fall, and organic cookie company Bang Cookies will open later this year.
The Food Hall is located on the second floor of the mall’s A-Wing, a space originally intended for the Munchies dining room, which, as planned, featured live cooking demonstrations and celebrity appearances from Munchies videos.
Instead, American Dream ended up using a smaller portion of the space for the Food Hall and plans to surround it with additional restaurants, including House of Que, a barbecue restaurant it opened earlier this year.
The current design allows American Dream to add more food vendors to the room if the concept takes off, or move to more sit-down, full-service restaurants if it doesn’t.
The mall has also been able to continue signing new tenants, including some veteran tenants on the cutting edge, amid reports of looming debt payments and financing problems. He faces his next payment deadline on August 1st.
American Dream recently landed at Active Games’ East Coast flagship location, an indoor, interactive gaming experience that fuses digital and physical gaming activities.
The playroom with HasbroHAS technology
, another innovative experience with Hasbro toy brands, is also in the works.
In any new mall project, prospective tenants typically want to know who else is on board before committing to a lease. With the American dream, this wait-and-see period was unusually long, first because of doubts that it could ever attract enough stores or visitors to fill it, and then because the pandemic set the world in motion and the decisions of leasing to hold.
While brick-and-mortar retailers have been slow to sign up, mall developers have shifted their focus toward entertainment, dining and experiential tenants, and it’s clear that other operators of ‘entertainment are looking at the mall’s current tenants and the crowds they attract. and saying “Me too”.
Paul Ghermezian, center, of Triple Five Group, the developer of American Dream, during the ribbon cutting ceremony … [+] for the Food Hall at American Dream.
Those tenants don’t seem fazed by frequent reports that the mall is at risk of defaulting on loan payments or that it has exhausted its reserve fund for debt payments.
“Our tenants are smart, sophisticated people who understand how financing works and believe in the project,” said Paul Ghermezian, a member of the family that runs Triple Five Group, owner and developer of American Dream, as well com of Mall of America. and West Edmonton Mall, he said during a grand opening celebration for the Food Hall.
Jim Kirkos, president and CEO of the local Meadowlands Chamber business group and a longtime proponent of the American Dream, said potential tenants see the crowds and success of current attractions and tenants and want to be downtown commercial
“You look around and you see hundreds of people having fun,” Kirkos said at the Food Hall’s opening celebration. The mall, he said, “has no problem attracting people.”
While the owners of American Dream still have to work out a number of financial issues, people should “give them a chance” and give them credit for continuing to move forward despite the financial hardships of the pandemic closings, Kirkos said.
