The developers behind American Dream — a $5 billion megamall in the Meadowlands — are arguing in court records that they have overpaid the borough of East Rutherford by $183 million in negotiated property tax payments and are entitled to a refund.
American Dream’s appeal of the property tax value is nothing new. The mall’s developers, Ameream, have filed appeals every year since opening in 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the latest documents, made public on Nov. 21, detail the extent to which the mall says it overpaid the borough. The mall was built using more than $1 billion in state and local subsidies…
“This is a property tax appeal,” said Marc Pfeiffer, a municipal finance expert and assistant director at the Bloustein Local Government Research Center at Rutgers University. It boils down to “what is the calculation for square footage.”