West Edmonton Mall (WEM) is a large shopping mall in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, that is owned, managed, and operated by Triple Five Group. It is the second most visited mall in Canada, after the Toronto Eaton Centre in Toronto, followed by Metropolis at Metrotown in Burnaby, and the 29th largest in the world by gross leasable area. It is the second largest shopping mall, by square footage, in North America behind the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. Mall of America encompasses 520,000 m2 and West Edmonton Mall encompasses 490,000 m2. By store count, West Edmonton Mall tops all in the Western Hemisphere as it currently counts over 800 occupants, in comparison to Mall of America's 520 occupants. The mall was founded by the Ghermezian brothers, who emigrated from Iran in 1959.