New Owner of Meadowlands Xanadu Site Plans Revival Work Soon The empty shell of the enormous retail and entertainment complex in the New Jersey Meadowlands, formerly known as Xanadu, has served as a daily reminder of how outsize ambitions made it one of the most notorious examples of the real estate collapse. Now, a new developer says the former Xanadu project is about to become a testament to the rebounding market. Triple Five Worldwide, the company chosen more than two years ago by Gov. Chris Christie to revive the project, says it plans to resume construction in the coming weeks, more than four years after work stopped. The company, a conglomerate based in Canada that owns two of the world's largest malls, plans to spend $1.7 billion, on top of the $1.9 billion spent by two previous developers. "Our intent is to start shortly," said Tony Armlin, vice president for development construction at Triple Five. We've never wavered in our intent to move forward. This is a great project. The current vision for the project is even bigger than the initial conception that failed so incredibly. It now has approvals to add an exotic glass-domed water park and an amusement park inspired by DreamWorks Animation - in addition to the performing arts center, indoor ski hill, movie theater, 400 shops and more than 50 restaurants already planned for what they call American Dream Meadowlands. But the hundreds of thousands of drivers who pass the derelict structure during every rush hour might be forgiven for their skepticism. After all, highly publicized starting dates have flown by like exit ramps on the Garden State Parkway with little to show for it. Most recently Governor Christie, who has promoted the project politically and financially, promised that it would be open by the time the area welcomes visitors to the 2014 Super Bowl, a date the company has acknowledged it will not meet. That is partly because of opposition from the Jets and the Giants, who play at the nearby MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands. The football teams refiled a lawsuit last month seeking to block the expanded project, claiming that American Dream would turn game days into a traffic nightmare, a violation of their lease. "It defies logic to say to have a complex that attracts 55 million, or 40 million, people a year, adding thousands and thousands of cars, and say it would not have a disastrous effect on ingress and egress," John K. Mara, president of the Giants, said in an interview. There are also questions about the viability of the project. The company estimates that the complex will draw 40 million visitors a year, down from their previous 55 million estimate, and that half of them would be tourists. But New Jersey has no shortage of malls, six of which can be found within a 16-minute drive of MetLife Stadium. And tourists may be reluctant to make the seven-mile trip from Times Square. Last year, a record 52 million tourists visited New York City, but only 11.5 million traveled south of Midtown to Lower Manhattan. Nevertheless, as Triple Five gears up, retail brokers say they are beginning to see some momentum among retailers wary of the project's start-and-stop history. "You could have written this thing off a couple of months ago," said Robert K. Futterman, whose firm, RKF Associates, represents Gap and Old Navy. But it now seems to be getting traction. H & M, Uniqlo, Zara, Forever 21 and dozens of others stores, many of which are already well established in the region, have signed conditional letters of intent to move into the complex, despite Bergen County's blue laws, which prohibit retail sales on Sundays. Mr. Armlin said that the original project "fell short on recreation and entertainment." That is why Triple Five has pushed to expand the project on an adjoining wetland parcel with an enclosed water park and, in partnership with DreamWorks, an amusement park based on Shrek, Kung Fu Panda and other animated movie characters. "They had omitted one key feature: the amusements necessary to becoming a true tourist destination," he said. Triple Five, which is owned by the Ghermezian family, envisions American Dream as a sister complex to the Mall of America in Minnesota and the West Edmonton Mall in Canada. Although Triple Five has repeatedly tried and failed to add a third entertainment-retail mall to its portfolio, he said that this one would be successful because of the population density, relatively high household income and elaborate transportation networks. By late summer or early fall, Mr. Armlin said, Triple Five plans to reach an agreement with the lenders that control the project, invest $200 million of its own money, take out a $700 million construction loan, raise as much as $450 million in secondary loans and sell up to $650 million in tax-exempt bonds. But, he insisted, construction will begin well before that. State and federal officials ultimately approved Triple Five's plan, with a healthy assist from the Christie administration, which has offered hundreds of millions of dollars in public financing for a project that was once hailed as cost free to taxpayers. Many local officials also support American Dream, because of the promise of jobs and tax revenue. But the Giants and the Jets want the amusement and water parks closed on game days, arguing that the crowds will wreak havoc. Their lease has what is effectively a veto over any expansion of the original mall. "Our endgame is not to kill the project," said Mr. Mara of the Giants. It's to protect our core business. Triple Five contends that highway improvements and mass transit connections surrounding the stadium and the adjacent mall, racetrack and arena will make the impact negligible. For months now, Governor Christie has shuttled between the two sides with the hope of resolving the dispute. "We have worked hard to appease their concerns," Mr. Armlin said. The inability to reach a settlement clearly concerns us. There has to be something else going on.