The Mall of America is one of the most visited places in the entire United States — a Minnesota landmark that attracts more annual visitors than the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. Most Americans assume it is owned by an American company. That assumption is wrong.
The real story of who owns the Mall of America involves a family of Iranian-Jewish immigrants who built a business empire in Canada, a legendary legal battle that lasted six years, a $1.67 billion debt default that handed chunks of the building to two of Wall Street’s most powerful banks — and one of the most remarkable retail dynasties in North American history.
If you enjoy ownership stories as rich as this, you will find equally fascinating tales in who owns Hobby Lobby, who owns the Superdome, and who owns Fanatics.
What Is the Mall of America?
The Mall of America (MOA) is a massive indoor shopping and entertainment complex located in Bloomington, Minnesota, just outside Minneapolis. It is the largest shopping mall in the United States by total floor area — so large it has its own ZIP code: 55425 — and one of the largest in the world.
The numbers behind it are staggering. It spans more than 5.6 million square feet of total space, houses more than 520 stores, and employs approximately 12,000 people across its retail, hospitality, and entertainment operations.
It generates an estimated $1.1 billion in annual revenue and nearly $2 billion in economic impact for the State of Minnesota each year.
It attracts approximately 40 million visitors annually — more than five times the number who visit the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in a given year.
Inside its walls, you will find Nickelodeon Universe — the largest indoor amusement park in the United States — a 1.2-million-gallon aquarium, an escape room, mini golf, a cinema, and hundreds of restaurants and shops. It has no central heating system.
The building stays at a comfortable 70 degrees Fahrenheit year-round entirely through body heat from visitors, lighting fixtures, and solar energy through its skylights.
Who Owns the Mall of America Right Now in 2026?
Triple Five Group — a privately held Canadian conglomerate — is the principal owner and operator of the Mall of America. Triple Five is controlled by the Ghermezian family, a Canadian business dynasty of Iranian-Jewish origin, whose chairman is Nader Ghermezian and whose CEO is Don Ghermezian.
However, the full ownership picture is more complex than a single family holding. As a result of a 2021 debt default on a separate project, a group of financial institutions led by JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs now hold a non-controlling minority stake of approximately 49% in the Mall of America — along with a matching stake in Triple Five’s West Edmonton Mall in Canada. Triple Five and the Ghermezian family retain the majority controlling interest and continue to manage and operate the property entirely.
Ownership and Key Stakeholders Table
| Owner / Party | Role | Stake | Key Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Triple Five Group (Ghermezian Family) | Principal Owner & Operator | Majority controlling stake (~51%) | Canadian private conglomerate; controlled by Ghermezian family since founding |
| Nader Ghermezian | Chairman of Triple Five Group | Part of family controlling stake | Son of founder Jacob Ghermezian; heads the family empire |
| Don Ghermezian | CEO of Triple Five Group | Part of family controlling stake | Day-to-day operational leader of Triple Five including Mall of America |
| JPMorgan Chase | Non-Controlling Minority Investor | Part of ~49% minority stake | Acquired stake via debt restructuring after Triple Five’s 2021 loan default |
| Goldman Sachs | Non-Controlling Minority Investor | Part of ~49% minority stake | Co-lender in the $1.67B American Dream construction loan; received MOA equity |
| Other Lending Institutions | Non-Controlling Minority Investors | Part of ~49% minority stake | Syndicate lenders in the American Dream construction loan |
| MOAC Mall Holdings, LLC | Operating Subsidiary | N/A | Triple Five subsidiary that directly manages the Mall of America day-to-day |
| State of Minnesota / City of Bloomington | Land-related Governmental Interests | No ownership stake | The city owns the land beneath parts of the complex under a ground lease arrangement |
The Ghermezian Family: Who Are They?
Understanding who owns the Mall of America means understanding one of the most extraordinary immigrant success stories in North American business history.
The Ghermezian family is a Canadian business dynasty of Iranian-Jewish origin. The family patriarch, Jacob Ghermezian, was born in Iran and established himself as a rug and carpet merchant before immigrating to Canada in the late 1950s. In 1965, he founded Germez Developments — later renamed Triple Five Group — in Edmonton, Alberta. The business pivoted from carpets to real estate, and Jacob instilled in his sons a vision for something the world had never seen: a shopping mall so large it was a destination in itself.
Jacob’s four sons — Nader, Raphael, Bahman, and Eskander — took that vision and ran with it. In 1981, Triple Five opened the first phase of the West Edmonton Mall in Alberta — what was then the largest shopping mall in the world. The mall eventually grew to include a full-sized NHL-regulation ice rink, a water park, a hotel, a miniature golf course, and a submarine ride. It was not just a shopping center. It was a city inside a building.
The Ghermezian family took that same philosophy and applied it to the United States — and the result was the Mall of America. For another story of an immigrant family building an extraordinary American business empire, see who owns Hyatt — where the Pritzker family built a hotel dynasty from equally humble origins.
The Origin Story: How Mall of America Was Built
The Mall of America was developed by Triple Five Group in partnership with two other entities — Melvin Simon & Associates (later Simon Property Group) and TIAA-CREF — on the former site of Metropolitan Stadium, where the Minnesota Vikings and Minnesota Twins once played.
Triple Five broke ground for the Mall of America in 1989, after years of planning and negotiations with Minnesota state officials who were initially skeptical that a private company could deliver on such an ambitious vision.
Construction cost more than $650 million — and required 13,300 tons of steel alone, nearly twice the amount used to build the Eiffel Tower. The mall opened on August 11, 1992, and the reaction was immediate and overwhelming. Bloomington was flooded with visitors from across Minnesota, the Midwest, and eventually the entire world.
The original development partnership split ownership three ways: Triple Five Group held 22.5%, Melvin Simon & Associates held 22.5%, and TIAA-CREF held 55%. Triple Five managed operations from day one, while Simon Property Group — which had absorbed Melvin Simon & Associates — managed the retail leasing and planning authority alongside them. That arrangement would soon become the source of the most bitter legal battle in the mall’s history.
The Six-Year Legal Battle: Triple Five vs. Simon Property Group
One of the most dramatic chapters in the Mall of America’s ownership history is a legal war that lasted six years and ended with one of the biggest reversals in American commercial real estate.
Simon Property Group — which had become one of the largest shopping mall operators in the world after absorbing Melvin Simon & Associates — attempted to quietly acquire majority ownership of the Mall of America through a series of behind-the-scenes transactions designed to exclude Triple Five from future profits. Triple Five discovered the scheme and sued.
The lawsuit alleged that Simon and related entities had secretly negotiated a deal to obtain majority ownership of the Mall of America, effectively cutting out the Ghermezians — the people who had conceived, designed, and built the property — from control of their own creation. The legal battle was fierce, expensive, and deeply personal.
In September 2003, after six years of litigation, a federal judge ruled in favor of Triple Five. Simon was forced to sell its entire stake back to Triple Five Group, making the Ghermezians the majority owner of the mall they had always believed was truly theirs.
On November 3, 2006, the Ghermezians spent $1 billion to gain full control of the Mall of America — buying out all remaining minority interests and finally holding the building entirely in family hands for the first time since it opened. Similar corporate ownership battles — where the founders fight to reclaim what they built — can be found in who owns Ben and Jerry’s and who owns Barnes and Noble.
The American Dream Disaster: How JPMorgan and Goldman Got In
The Ghermezians’ dream of full, unencumbered ownership of the Mall of America lasted about a decade before a catastrophic bet on another megamall project changed the ownership structure permanently.
In 2011, Triple Five acquired a troubled megamall project in Bergen County, New Jersey — formerly known as Meadowlands Xanadu — and renamed it American Dream. The project had been stalled for years under previous developers.
Triple Five promised to finish it and turn it into the most spectacular shopping and entertainment destination on the East Coast of the United States.
To fund the $3.5 billion construction, Triple Five secured a $1.67 billion construction loan in 2017 — and used its two crown jewels, the Mall of America and the West Edmonton Mall, as collateral. At the time, Bloomington city officials expressed concern when they discovered this arrangement. Triple Five reassured them the loan would never become a problem.
It became a problem. American Dream opened in phases beginning in 2019 but was immediately devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The mall was barely open before it was forced to close. Triple Five lost more than $64 million in a single year at the project and defaulted on the $1.2 billion remaining construction loan in March 2021.
The default triggered the collateral clause. JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and the other syndicate lenders in the loan received a non-controlling 49% minority stake in both the Mall of America and the West Edmonton Mall as part of a debt restructuring agreement. Triple Five retained its majority controlling interest and continued to manage both properties — but just under half of all Mall of America profits now flow to Wall Street lenders rather than the Ghermezian family.
What Is Inside the Mall of America?
The Mall of America is not really a mall in the traditional sense — it is a small city inside a building. Understanding its scale helps explain why it generates so much revenue and why it attracts so many visitors from across the world.
At its center is Nickelodeon Universe — a 7-acre indoor theme park featuring 27 rides and attractions, including roller coasters, a log chute, and a Ferris wheel, all operated by Triple Five under a licensing agreement from Paramount Skydance, which now owns the Nickelodeon brand.
Beside it is the SEA LIFE Minnesota Aquarium, housing 10,000 sea creatures in a 1.2-million-gallon facility with an underwater walk-through tunnel.
The mall also contains FlyOver America, a ride-film experience simulating flight across American landscapes; Crayola Experience; multiple escape rooms; a 14-screen cinema; and dozens of dining options ranging from fast food to fine dining.
The combined effect is that four out of ten visitors are tourists — not locals — and one in three comes from more than 150 miles away. The Mall of America has become a destination in its own right, the way theme parks and landmark museums are destinations — not just a place to shop.
Triple Five’s Other Megamalls
To fully understand the Mall of America’s ownership, it helps to understand the broader empire that Triple Five has built around it.
Triple Five Group owns and operates the three largest malls in North America. The West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada was once the largest shopping mall in the world and remains the largest in Canada — containing a full-size indoor water park, an ice rink, a hotel, a submarine attraction, and hundreds of stores. The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota is the largest in the United States. And American Dream in Bergen County, New Jersey — despite its troubled history — has gradually established itself as a major East Coast entertainment destination.
The three malls together make Triple Five the single most powerful owner of destination retail real estate in North America — a position achieved by one family of immigrants across four decades of building things that most people said could not be done.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q1. Who owns the Mall of America in 2026?
The Mall of America is principally owned by Triple Five Group, controlled by the Ghermezian family of Canada, which holds the majority controlling interest and manages all operations.
Q2. Is the Mall of America American-owned?
No. Despite its name, the Mall of America is owned and operated by Triple Five Group — a Canadian private conglomerate headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta, owned by the Ghermezian family.
Q3. Who are the Ghermezian family?
The Ghermezian family is a Canadian business dynasty of Iranian-Jewish origin, founded by Jacob Ghermezian who immigrated from Iran to Canada. His sons — including Nader (chairman) and Don (CEO) — now run Triple Five Group.
Q4. Do JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs own part of the Mall of America?
Yes. JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and other lenders hold a non-controlling 49% minority stake in the Mall of America, acquired through a 2021 debt restructuring after Triple Five defaulted on a $1.67 billion construction loan for its American Dream mall in New Jersey.
Q5. How large is the Mall of America?
The Mall of America spans more than 5.6 million square feet of total space, houses over 520 stores, employs approximately 12,000 people, and is so large it has its own ZIP code: 55425.
Q6. How many visitors does the Mall of America get per year?
The Mall of America attracts approximately 40 million visitors annually — more than five times the annual attendance of the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World.
Q7. When did Triple Five gain full control of the Mall of America?
On November 3, 2006, after winning a six-year legal battle against Simon Property Group and spending $1 billion to buy out remaining interests, the Ghermezian family gained full control of the Mall of America.
Q8. What other malls does Triple Five own?
Triple Five Group owns the three largest malls in North America: the Mall of America in Minnesota, the West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, and American Dream in Bergen County, New Jersey.
The Mall of America is principally owned by Triple Five Group — a Canadian private conglomerate controlled by the Ghermezian family — which holds a majority controlling stake of approximately 51% and manages all day-to-day operations through its subsidiary MOAC Mall Holdings, LLC.
A non-controlling minority stake of approximately 49% is held by a group of financial institutions led by JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, acquired through a 2021 debt restructuring after Triple Five defaulted on a $1.67 billion construction loan for its American Dream megamall in New Jersey.
Founded by Jacob Ghermezian and built by his sons, Triple Five opened the Mall of America on August 11, 1992 at a cost of more than $650 million.
After winning a six-year legal battle against Simon Property Group and spending another $1 billion to buy out remaining interests in 2006, the Ghermezians finally held the building they had always considered theirs — only to see nearly half of it flow to Wall Street lenders a decade and a half later.
Today, the Mall of America employs 12,000 people, generates approximately $1.1 billion in annual revenue, attracts 40 million visitors a year, and remains — by every meaningful measure — the most iconic retail destination in the United States.