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The owners of New Jersey's American Dream supermall want to wait until the next Winter Olympics to pay back nearly $2B in construction debt.
Triple Five Group, the Canadian firm behind the 3M SF indoor mall and entertainment venue in the Meadowlands, is in talks with JPMorgan Chase and other investors on a four-year extension to pay back its $1.7B loan, Bloomberg reports.
News of the talks comes a little more than a week after Triple Five depleted nearly all of its reserve account to make a $9.3M payment on $290M in municipal bond debt supported by sales tax receipts, leaving the developer with just $820 left in reserves. Triple Five's next payment is due on Aug. 1, CNBC previously reported.
American Dream is saddled with a $1.2B senior loan and a $475M mezzanine loan from 2017, both of which were supposed to be repaid in 2021, Bloomberg reported. Triple Five's talks with JPMorgan are an effort to restructure the overall $3B in debt to avoid bankruptcy after the mall had to shut down soon after its debut because of the pandemic. Lenders on the mall include Starwood Property Trust, Goldman Sachs Group, CIM Group and iStar, according to Bloomberg.
The mall, whose nearly two-decade-long development was fraught with delays, opened in 2019 before quickly shuttering. While it finally reopened in 2021, it suffered damage from flooding due to Hurricane Ida — and an electrical fire that damaged the indoor ski slope, which is now expected to reopen in May.
American Dream owners said that sales in the last three months of 2021 totaled $82.4M, a 1% decline from the quarter before, Bloomberg reported. Another 100 retailers are expected to open this year, an American Dream spokesperson told Bloomberg.
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