What began as a relatively modest 800,000-square-foot expansion of Carousel Center quickly mutated into a 100-million-square-foot Frankenmall that would cost $20 billion to build, making it one of the largest building projects in US history, according to Architectural Record. And it wasn’t going to save just Syracuse, but the entire world. In the pages of the New York Times Magazine, Congel crowed that DestiNY USA would “produce more benefit for humanity than any one thing that private enterprise has ever done.”

Below is a partial list of DestiNY USA’s humanitarian benefits:

• 5-star restaurants, including Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville
• 25,000-square-foot off-Broadway theater designed to host premier acts such as David Blaine Magic and Blue Man Group
• Onondaga Dunes, an 18-hole golf course to be built over the Solvay wastebeds
• Swim-with-the-Fish Experience, with dolphins, tropical fish, and stingrays
• Torch-lined historical re-creation of the Erie Canal
• 4 miles of jogging and biking trails
• Butterfly sanctuary
• Rainforest habitat, with real tropical plants and animatronics
• 5-acre extreme sports complex