Welcome to the Pleasure Dome

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In their adopted hometown of Edmonton, Alta., the immigrant Ghermezian brothers -- Eskandar, Nader, Raphael and Bahman -- are figures swaddled in rumor and mystery. Fiercely privacyminded, they refuse to divulge their exact ages and are rarely photographed together. Their rapid-fire conversations in Farsi and French often befuddle English-speaking business peers. But from behind that fog, the four Iranian natives have created one of Canada's biggest and most spectacular real estate baronies and are quickly expanding their razzle-dazzle fiefdom southward. Before long, U.S. consumers will get a full exposure to the revolutionary marketing flair of the Ghermezians, who have combined a Disney-style entertainment vision with their own shrewd merchandising sense to produce the latest in suburban shopping temples, the megamall.

The prototype of the Ghermezian consumer center is the West Edmonton Mall, a $750 million garden of retail delights located 350 miles north of the Canada-U.S. border. Far and away the world's largest shopping mall, the sprawling indoor complex is crammed with 836 stores, 110 restaurants, 20 movie theaters and a 360-room hotel. Covering 5.2 million sq. ft., or the equivalent of 108 U.S. football fields, the West Edmonton Mall is twice the size of North America's runner-up shopping mall, the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, Calif. The dimensions loom even more impressively in relation to Edmonton's population, only some 683,000.

Nonetheless, more than 100,000 people a day, as many as 40% of them from the U.S., travel to the Edmonton complex, and with good reason. The Ghermezian mall contains a mammoth amusement park, with entry free of charge. Fully integrated into the retail complex, it comes complete with roller coasters and carrousels (47 rides in all). The mall also boasts an 18-hole miniature golf course and a $5 million hockey rink where Superstar Wayne Gretzky practices with the Edmonton Oilers. The center's Waterpark sports a 600-ft. water slide and a 2.5-acre artificial lake featuring a replica of the Santa Maria and four yellow, 40-ft. submarines that take tourists on $4 "undersea" adventures.

Consummate merchandisers, the Ghermezians were looking for ways to lure retail shoppers in a thinly populated region where the winters are long and temperatures often dip to -40 degreesF. Much of their concept is blatantly borrowed from Disneyland -- right down to the name of their amusement park, which they have dubbed Fantasyland. (Walt Disney Productions is suing over use of that name.) But the Ghermezians view the delights of their pleasure dome unsentimentally. "We do not make money on the entertainment," says Eskandar, fortyish, one of the less secretive of the brothers. "We make money on the retail sales. But it is the entertainment that brings in the people."

The Ghermezian approach is indisputably successful. Sales revenues for the complex last year totaled $560 million. That take is the equivalent of $280 per sq. ft. of retail space, which is twice the rate of a typical U.S. retail outlet.