Knott’s Pans for Gold in Midwest : Proposals to Design Amusement Park in World’s Biggest Mall Could Be Bonanza

Knott’s Berry Farm has submitted concepts for developing the entertainment and amusement park portion of what would be the world’s largest mall in a suburb of Minneapolis.

If an agreement is reached between Knott’s and the mall’s developer, it would mark Knott’s first venture outside California. The developer has expressed interest in Knott’s operating--as well as designing--the six to seven acres of theme facilities to be integrated throughout the planned Fashion Mall of America and Fantasyworld in Bloomington, Minn.

Knott’s involvement in the project also could pave the way for additional national sales of Knott’s Berry Farms’ jams, jellies and salad dressings.

Fashion Mall will be patterned after a 5.5-million-square-foot mega-mall in West Edmonton, Canada, built by Triple Five Corp. of Alberta province--which also is developing the Bloomington project. Knott’s discussions have been with Indianapolis-based Melvin Simon & Associates of Indianapolis, which recently agreed to buy 50% of Fashion Mall of America and become its managing partner.

‘Very Active’ Negotiations

Both Knott’s and Simon & Associates, the nation’s second-largest developer, stress that two months of “very, very active� negotiations have not yet brought a final agreement with Knott’s.

But E. Robert Horn, assistant vice president of Simon & Associates, confirmed that “we’re very interested in the Knott’s concept. . . . They’ve been sitting seven miles away from that behemoth�--a reference to Knott’s Anaheim neighbor, Disneyland--�and they obviously do very, very well where they are.�

Knott’s spokesman Stuart Zanville also confirmed that “we’ve been developing concepts of how to create an indoor version of Camp Snoopy. . . . It could also include other elements like a variation of our log ride and a flume ride.� But the project “would have to appeal to children during the day and adults at night,� he said.

The Bloomington project would be like nothing that exists in the United States. Fashion Mall has approval to build a 9.5-million-square-foot project--more than three times the size of South Coast Plaza, which has 2.7-million square feet of retail space.

Scheduled to open its first phase in 1990, Fashion Mall will have some elements copied from the West Edmonton Mall, now the biggest shopping center in the world.

Built and owned by the four Ghermezian brothers, the neon and marble Canadian mall is so immense that shoppers use golf carts to travel the length of the mile-long, two-story concourse. Along the way, they pass 11 department stores, more than 820 shops and a miniature golf course.

Theme Park Concept

What makes the Edmonton and planned Bloomington projects unique is the concept of the mall as a theme park. The Canadian facility, for example, has a hockey rink, a huge aquarium, a small zoo, a life-size replica of a Spanish galleon, 25 amusement rides and a “water park� the size of five football fields.

Retail industry experts have noted that Americans are becoming tired of the basic large-mall formula that has been successfully repeated from California-chic Fashion Island in Newport Beach to the ultra-posh Trump Tower in Manhattan. The new generation of urban centers, so the thinking goes, combine a flair for fun with shops, restaurants and marketing expertise--which means that shoppers stay longer and spend more money in the process.

Executives with Triple Five, which is owned by the Iranian Ghermezians, have said the appeal of both the Edmonton and Bloomington projects is that people stay three times longer in malls with amusements.

“People like to be entertained when they shop and when they eat,� Horn said. “There’s synergy between retail shopping as entertainment and entertainment with a retail component in it.�

In Bloomington, developers plan 11 anchor stores (including Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s), 800 smaller stores, 100 theme restaurants and three hotels. South Coast Plaza, by contrast, has eight anchors and almost 300 stores.

The first stage will be 3.8 million square feet of mostly retail and entertainment space.

Of the amusement portion, preliminary plans for Phase I include a replica of a man-made lake in West Edmonton and an imaginary Tivoli Gardens stocked with flowers and greenery imported from abroad, said Robert Hoffman, development coordinator and a lawyer with the Bloomington office of Larkin, Hoffman, Lindgren & Daly Ltd.

Ideas for the Park

Although discussions are still in the conceptual stage, Hoffman said Friday that Triple Five envisions wildlife, art and educational exhibits throughout the mall. “You could come around a corner and see an exhibit with lions, then go around another corner and see 1,000 yellow canaries or an exhibit of rare fish,� he said.

In the center of the oblong mall would be one or more domes housing the major tourist attractions. “There’ll be two miniature golf courses, a huge dolphin show, fish, an aquarium exhibit . . . a roller coaster . . . a water park with 18 slides,� Hoffman said.

Family-owned Knott’s was asked to develop the amusement park portion of the Bloomington project by Simon & Associates. “They came to us and visited the park,� Zanville said.

Zanville said that Knott’s submitted “a lot of different ideas . . . highly aesthetic things that are family-oriented . . . with rides, water, trees and a high level of ambiance with beautiful landscaping.�

According to Zanville, one of Knott’s proposals has “a lot of rides. One has no rides. One has just theaters. One is just for walking through. One proposal had arcade games. It’s going to be a combination of all that.�

He suggested that the development could have an aviary, an indoor animal exhibit, and “two major rides such as “a runaway mine train or a flume log ride.� Those two rides are the top two rides at Knott’s Buena Park facility.

But Zanville stressed that Knott’s anticipates major differences between the Minnesota project and its sister mega-mall in Edmonton. “We don’t envision loud thrill rides, and there’s no roller coaster. It’s mixing theater, live shows, major rides, arcades and things for people to walk through.�

A key reason for Simon & Associates’ interest in Knott’s could be the company’s license to use Charles Schulz’s Snoopy character in amusement parks. “We hold the one license for amusement parks,� Zanville said. “So if they want to involve the Peanuts characters in the park, we’re the only ones who can provide that.�

Zanville said it is “a possibility� that Knott’s could operate the Bloomington project’s amusement components.

Horn, the Simon & Associates executive, said that “If we make a deal with (Knott’s), we’d want to use their expertise in operations as well as design.�

While Horn said Simon & Associates has “had conversations with others� about developing the entertainment and amusement portions of the project, “we’re very impressed with Knott’s.�

Its developers say the Bloomington project, which is expected to cost $600 million to $700 million, would attract people from metropolitan Minneapolis as well as seven neighboring states and parts of Canada. They predict annual attendance of more than 23 million people--or roughly double the combined number of visitors each year at Disneyland and Walt Disney World in Florida.

Knott’s expects to start negotiating the scope of its possible involvement with Simon & Associates within the next two weeks.

If an agreement is reached, Zanville said, Knott’s could have a permanent display at the mall, allowing the Buena Park company “the first major penetration of Knott’s foods into that area.�

Knott’s makes and distributes jams, jellies, preserves, syrup and salad dressing, mostly in Southern California. At the amusement park, half of total revenue is from sales of Knott’s food products.

Not everyone is quite as optimistic as Knott’s, however. One competitor, who asked not to be identified, suggested that Knott’s may lack the support staff to take on such a project.

“Their support staff will get real stretched,� he said. “But it’s a very intriguing idea.�