The Gauntlet Has Been Thrown

Contender 1 - West Edmonton Mall Edmonton,Alberta

Stats
-Largest mall in Canada
-Third largest mall in the world
-covers a gross area of 570,000 m² (5.3 million ft²)[1]
- cost C$1.2 billion to build
- over 800 stores and services[3]
-parking for more than 20,000 vehicles
-more than 23,000 people are employed at the property
-receives 28.2 million visitors per year
-between 60,000 and 150,000 shoppers daily (varies by day and season)
-currently valued at $926 million

Contender 2 - Lac Mirabel North of Montreal, Quebec

Stats
-grand opening is scheduled for 2009
-(when finished)the mega-mall will cover an area twice the size of West Edmonton Mall, with 14 million square feet of retail, residential and commercial space
-total investment is expected to top $1.2-billion
-three-hundred retail outlets are planned
-a food emporium
-border a man-made lake and a river stocked with trout
-A $100-million, million-square-foot sports complex will house an 8,000-seat arena for major junior hockey
-also planned are an indoor soccer field, aquarium and go-cart track
-a 70,000-square-foot educational centre.

Lac Mirabel is well situated in a growing northern suburb of Montreal. As young families buy homes around and in Mirabel, where property is cheaper. Also the region is on the doorstep of the Saint-Sauveur Valley with its cluster of ski villages and factory outlets perfect to garner tourist dollars. READ MORE

Here are some fun facts on West Edmonton Mall from Wikipedia:

* Before 1998, the mall owned more submarines than the Canadian Navy. The mall had a submarine ride that went to depths of 6 metres.

* The mall's ice rink is host to an annual cheerleading competition held by the ACA.

* WEM was the official title sponsor of Edmonton's Champ Car World Series race. Until 2007 the race was officially billed as The West Edmonton Mall Grand Prix Presented by The Brick until they were out bid for the Sponsor title by Rexall.

* The mall is home to the world's largest parking lot, with over 20,000 available spots free of charge

* Mononc' Serge composed a song about the West Edmonton Mall.

* The movie "Christmas In Wonderland" was shot at the mall. This resulted in holiday decorations being left up well into the summer.

* The mall was originally chosen as the set location of the movie The Running Man, but was relocated to Los Angeles

* Paper Marriage, with Sammo Hung and Maggie Cheung, had its climactic finale filmed at the West Edmonton Mall; the water slides and the Santa Maria replica were prominently featured.

* The film Good Luck Chuck used West Edmonton Mall's penguins. However, the film did not shoot in the mall.

Preventing Another Minneapolis

Since the terrible bridge collapse in Minneapolis, North American cities are re-evaluating the structural integrity of their bridges. In major cities bridges see hundreds of thousands cars in months and sometimes days. There challenge is volume, but what about the challenge of size?

Alberta has some of the biggest vehicles in the world traveling on its roads and bridges going north to work on the oil sands, experts fear that there may be good reason to worry about these roadways.

"About half of the province's bridges were built in the 1960s or earlier, and structures of that vintage normally have a lifespan of about 50 years..."It's not saying every bridge is unsafe, it's just saying that we do have a problem on our hands," "Professor Roger Cheng, head of the University of Alberta's civil and environmental engineering department

Even scarier...

According to a 2006 Statistics Canada Study Bridges in Canada have already reached 49 per cent of their useful life.

The tragedy in Minneapolis and in Quebec last year can only be thanked for raising awareness to this silent threat.

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