In our next MALL HALL OF FAME Cavalcade, we will explore the five largest shopping mall developer / owner corporations. From humble mid-20th century beginnings, these companies have each expanded exponentially to become the titans that they are today.

All MALLMAKERS will be listed in order of the GLA (gross leasable area) owned, with only those properties within the fifty states included in calculating the total mall area of each entity.

In order to better understand our MALLMAKERS, we need to -first- familiarize ourselves with the single most important piece of jargon within the realm of retail real estate...that of the Real Estate Investment Trust / REIT [pronounced "ree-it"].

First established by an act of Congress in 1960 (with ammendments in 1986), the Real Estate Investment Trust -in a nutshell- is a tax shelter. Under the provisions of an REIT, corporate income taxes are reduced, or eliminated entirely.

There are qualifications that companies must adhere to to enjoy this tax break, including the following;

The corporate entity must...

* Be managed as a corporation, trust or association.
* Be jointly owned by at least one hundred individuals.
* Maintain at least seventy-five percent of its assets as real estate investments.
* Distribute at least ninety percent of its profits to stockholders as dividends.

However, the corporate entity must not...

* Be a financial institution or insurance company.

Of course, one could go on ad infinitum about various aspects of an REIT. Hopefully, the description above will suffice.

All of the featured MALLMAKERS had humble beginnings in the mid-20th century. Moreover, each one grew exponentially and eventually became the mega-conglomerate that we know today.

With that said...we now go on to the first REIT on our list; America's largest MALLMAKER...