Construction Finally Approved On World's Largest Environmental Megamall

Destiny USA -- the purportedly uber-green mega-mall planned for Syracuse, N.Y. -- is finally ready to move into the construction phase, after developers and local officials ended years of bickering and reached a 30-year tax deal this week.

According to lead developer Robert Congel, it will be the largest complex in the world run entirely on renewable energy. The first phase, 848,000 square feet of retail, dining, and entertainment space, could open in 2008; subsequent phases include a 1,000-room hotel and an additional 350,000 square feet of shops. Congel says the mega-mall will set a new standard for eco-friendly development, and bring welcome job opportunities and tourism to Syracuse, where almost 30 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Does it count as "tourism" when you visit a mall?

From Wikipedia: Destiny USA is the Pyramid Companies of Syracuse, New York's plan to turn Syracuse into a leading entertainment and technology city. [Earlier] plans called for construction on the two-site complex to begin in 2005, with completion in 2008. The project includes an expansion of the Carousel Center into the country's largest shopping mall, surpassing the Mall of America in size, and a 1 million square foot technology complex several miles to the north, in the town of Salina.

From a Grist 2005 article:

"Picture a gargantuan shopping complex in upstate New York -- a so-called "retail city" big enough to make Mall of America look like a five-and-dime -- with thousands of shops plus restaurants, theaters, hotels, a high-tech research park for commercial R&D, and a sprawling, climate-controlled biosphere for recreation. Yet another environmental abomination, you say? ... Despite skepticism from a number of Syracuse locals, commercial-development analysts, and renewable-energy experts that the immense and unprecedented scheme can be pulled off, Congel doesn't hesitate to make grandiose predictions for DestiNY, claiming it will attract tourists from around the world and become a paradigm-shifting catalyst for the nation's renewable-energy markets."

From the Economist:

"Like the rest of upstate New York, Syracuse has been the victim of suburban sprawl and deindustrialisation. It is poor (with almost 30% of residents below the poverty line), shrinking (its population has fallen by a quarter since 1970) and broke (its mayor has declared a new era of crisis)..."

Thanks to Grist Magazine