Brent Batten: American Dream — or nightmare — taking shape across Alligator Alley

When the biggest anything in the country is taking shape 90 minutes from where you live, it’s noteworthy.

The biggest stadium, the biggest garbage dump, the biggest ball of twine, you name it.

It’s worth mentioning then that the biggest mall in America is moving through the approval process in Miami-Dade County, across Alligator Alley from Naples.

More:Miami-Dade County approves megamall near Everglades that would be largest in US

The project, called American Dream Miami, cleared a major hurdle last week when Miami-Dade County commissioners voted 9-1 in favor of zoning changes to allow the development of the 6-million-square-foot complex.

The developers, the Triple Five Group of Canada, don’t like to call the American Dream project a mall.

“We’re not in the mall business,” Don Ghermezian, Triple Five's president, told the commissioners at the May 17 zoning hearing.

That’s debatable, given that the company’s signature project is the 5.4-million-square-foot Mall of America near Minneapolis, now recognized as the biggest mall in the country. Another Triple Five venture, the West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, is even bigger and is the largest mall in North America.

Triple Five envisions American Dream Miami, like the Mall of America, as a combination of shopping, entertainment and theme park, a mix Ghermezian calls “retailtainment.”

A similar, slightly smaller project, American Dream Meadowlands, is under construction in New Jersey with an anticipated opening date of March 2019.

Features promised at American Dream Miami include a water park, a performing arts center, a 14-screen movie theater, an indoor ski slope with manufactured snow, a lake with a submarine ride, an aquarium, a roller coaster and a Ferris wheel.

Construction of the center and surrounding infrastructure is projected to cost $4 billion.

At the nine-hour rezoning hearing, environmental groups objected to the project on several fronts. Its location where Interstate 75 meets the Florida Turnpike is too close to the Everglades, they said. Environmentalists were also dissatisfied with the water management plans offered by the developers.

Many in the standing-room crowd wore stickers with the word “Nightmare” and a thumbs-down symbol.

Residents of nearby Miami Lakes objected to traffic — an estimated 70,000 vehicle trips per day — to be generated by the development.

Representatives of other east coast malls asked commissioners not to approve taxpayer subsidies for the competing project.

American Dream still must go through a lengthy permitting process, but the May 17 hearing was the last approval needed from elected leaders unless the plans change significantly.

No construction or opening dates were set.

Those arguing in favor of the American Dream cited its potential economic impact.

It is anticipated to draw 30 million visitors a year. By comparison, the Mall of America gets 40 million visitors a year and, by some counts, is the most visited attraction in the U.S. Orlando’s Disney World gets about 20 million visitors a year.

The addition of American Dream would bring Miami into the theme park game, allowing it to compete with Orlando for that segment of the tourism market, supporters say.

The 2,000 hotel rooms planned at American Dream Miami would generate millions in tourist taxes for the county.

About 14,000 full-time jobs would be created at the venue, after 20,000 temporary construction jobs created to build the place, supporters say.

Improvements to roads and mass transit would  amount to about $200 million. Some of the improvements to I-75 already have been budgeted by the state. The developer will pay $60 million in impact fees, but skeptics aren’t convinced some of the costs won’t fall to taxpayers.

Situated between the more populated cities of Miami, Fort Myers/Cape Coral and Tampa — Collier County occasionally gets to be a spectator as major developments too big for us to support wind their way to completion. Two examples — Southwest Florida International Airport and Florida Gulf Coast University — come to mind.

American Dream Miami is another instance in which the competing factions will wrestle over details large and small and, when the dust settles, the finished product will be just a quick trip across Alligator Alley away.