The West Edmonton Mall, completed in 1985 at a cost of $750-million, remains the largest enclosed shopping mall in North America, but several malls open or under construction in China and the United Arab Emirates are larger.
     The mall encompasses 570,000 square meters (5.2-million square feet) of total floor space, 800 stores (including 8 department stores), a 360-room hotel, and 110 restaurants and eating places. Its list of amusement places is also impressively large. There is a full-scale amusement park with 47 different rides, an ocean-wave swimming pool with sand beach, an aquarium, and a miniature golf course.  If all that is too much for you, enjoy some peace and meditation in the chapel--so long as a wedding is not in progress. 

    The Mall of America, with its 390,000 square meters (4.2-million square feet) of floor space, is the largest shopping mall in the United States, as measured by total space. There are three US malls that have larger gross leasable areas. It was completed in 1992 at a cost of $635-million. 
     The mall contains about 520 stores on three main levels and has 2.3 miles of primary corridors. The fourth floor is an entertainment district, with restaurants, movie theaters, and night clubs. Occupying the center court is Camp Snoopy, a full-scale amusement park with a roller coaster and 20 other rides. The mall attracts more than 40-million shoppers per year, who spend an estimated $1-billion annually.