| |
N0KFQ > TODAY 18.09.13 16:18l 52 Lines 2463 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 4749_KB0WSA
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Sep 18
Path: IZ3LSV<IW0QNL<JH4XSY<JE7YGF<N9PMO<GB7LDI<N0KFQ<KB0WSA
Sent: 130918/1501Z 4749@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.55
Sep 18, 1981:
Canada mall sets parking-lot record
On this day, the 20,000-car parking lot at Canada's West Edmonton
Mall makes the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest
parking lot in the world. The mall has held other records, too:
At one time or another it's been the World's Largest Shopping
Mall (5.2 million square feet, or about 48 city blocks), the
World's Largest Indoor Amusement Park and the World's Largest
Indoor Water Park (which includes the World's Largest Indoor Lake
and the World's Largest Indoor Wave Pool).
The West Edmonton Mall has more than 800 stores, 100 restaurants,
and 19 movie theaters. It also has a full-size ice-skating rink,
where the Edmonton Oilers occasionally practice; two hotels, one
of which boasts elaborately themed rooms (the Hollywood Room, the
Polynesian Room, the Igloo Room, the Canadian Rail Room, the
African Room, and the Arabian Room, for example); a chapel; and a
sizeable handful of nightclubs. The mall is arranged in a series
of wings, also themed: There is an opulent 19th-century European
boulevard, a faux Bourbon Street, and a Chinatown wing arranged
around a koi pond. A replica of Christopher Columbus' famous
Santa Maria shares a lagoon with real submarines and exotic fish.
When the mall opened in 1981, its developer offered this
dedication: "What we have done means you don't have to go to New
York or Paris or Disneyland or Hawaii," he said. "We have it all
here for you in one place, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada!"
Though the mall has held the world's largest parking-lot record
for years, some people argue that it shouldn't: Because the lot
is half indoors and half outdoors, they say, it's actually not
one parking structure but two. By that calculation, you can find
the world's largest parking lot at Seattle's Sea-Tac airport,
which has 13,000 parking spaces under one roof. At any rate, huge
lots seem to be everywhere: Universal Studios has two 10,000-car
garages, the Denver airport has two 7,000-car lots, and the
Baltimore airport has two garages that hold almost 14,000 cars in
all.
Whether it deserves it or not, the West Edmonton Mall's
parking-lot record will soon be broken. In Dubai, a 40,000-space
parking lot is under construction at a shopping center, and the
lot at that nation's new Al Maktoum International Airport will
have room for almost 100,000 cars.
73, K.O. and Billie...
...."on the road again".
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
Using Outpost Ver 2.7.0 c21
Read previous mail | Read next mail
| |
