Under the Simon DeBartolo name, the company continued to purchase retail property. Before the merger, DeBartolo Realty had been a major rival of the Simons in the development of shopping centers. Simon Property Group merged with DeBartolo Realty Corporation in 1996 and was renamed Simon DeBartolo Group. In 1993, Simon and Associates changed its name to Simon Property Group under the leadership of David Simon, Mel Simon’s son, when it also became a publicly-traded company. When it opened, it included 8 department stores, over 400 smaller shops, a seven-acre indoor amusement park, and a 1.2 million-gallon walk-through aquarium among its attractions. The company is also the managing partner in the Mall of America, which opened in 1992 in Bloomington, Minnesota as the largest retail, hotel, and entertainment complex in the United States. One of Simon’s major roles in this partnership was serving as the day-to-day manager of the facility. Its Indianapolis interests also include a public-private partnership with the city in Circle Centre Mall. The company owns or has an interest in several Indianapolis centers: Castleton Square Mall, The Fashion Mall at Keystone at the Crossing, and Greenwood Park Mall. By the early 1990s, the Simon company was one of the largest and most successful developers of Shopping Centers in the country, owning and managing more than 147 centers in 30 states from its Indianapolis headquarters.

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