🚀 go-pugleaf

In <some article> someone writes:
> Would someone in Edmonton like to pick up a promotional brochure and quote
> some figures over the net?  I forget the specifics.

Well, this was in the Edmonton Sun on November 16 : 

WEM Contains 23% of Edmonton Retail Space

The city planning department reports that the huge West Edmonton Mall
contains 23 per cent of the city's total retail space and in 1986
captured an estimated 42 per cent of all consumer dollars spent in
shopping centres in the city.

In a department publication called "City Trends", the department reports
that the huge mall occupies 473,790 square metres.  The next largest mall,
Southgate, is 66,900 square metres, and Londonderry is third with 66,400
square metres.

The mall, with its three phases, now employs 18,000 workers in 828 stores.

Another 1000 are expected to be employed in the expanded Fantasyland and
the new hotel will mean 400 more, the magazine says.

The mall cost almost $1 billion to build and generated $7.3 million in
property taxes for the city in 1985.

When Fantasyland and the hotel are completed, the city estimates the complex
will generate about $11 million a year in tax revenues.

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Our claim to glory : the largest shopping mall in the world.  If that
doesn't make you proud to live in Edmonton, nothing will.  :-)

Incidentally, the Ghermezians are Iranian, they immigrated some years ago (~20)
to Toronto, where they started a rug importing business.  Just think, it could 
have been West Toronto Mall.