The Mall of America opened in Bloomington, Minn. on this day in 1992. At 5.6 million square feet, it remains the largest mall in the United States. Since then, the shopper’s paradise has exemplified the trends shaping the retail shopping industry more broadly, especially the turmoil malls have undergone over the past few decades.
Finding a place to build such a behemoth took some doing. The demolition of Metropolitan Stadium, the former ballpark of the Minnesota Twins and the Vikings, created a vast swath of empty land ripe for development. The new mall filled the whole space, including 330 retail storefronts, a movie theater, theme park, a ton of restaurants and nightclubs, and a parking lot for over 13,000 cars. Over time it became even more ambitious, adding an aquarium and light rail connections to the Twin Cities’ downtowns. By 2022, it had its own ZIP code.
It hasn’t been an entirely smooth ride. With the decline in foot traffic in malls since the 2000s, the Mall of America has seen major closures in the past two decades. One of its four anchor stores, Bloomingdale’s, closed its doors in 2012. Sears did the same in 2018. The mall itself was shuttered for 12 weeks during the COVID-19 pandemic, and one of its major restaurants, the Hard Rock Café, opted not to reopen at all.
Closures have continued to roil the place, but there’s been some good news, too. Stores have continued to shut down, but have been somewhat balanced out by a fair number of openings. In 2025, over 24 major brands would open locations in the mall, including Primark, New Balance, and Pandora.
