Over the next decade, the immense Mall of America is slated to grow bigger, then even bigger, then bigger still.

Construction has begun on the first puzzle piece, but there are more pieces — a lot more — still to come. Together, they’re aimed at transforming America’s largest shopping mall with hot new attractions, hundreds of additional stores and millions more visitors each year.

By the time the dust settles on $2.5 billion in additions, plans call for the mall to approximately double in size, with as many as 300 new retailers along with glitzy attractions such as an NHL-sized skating rink and a world-class water park.

“The overarching goal is to always keep the attraction fresh and continue to enhance it,” said Maureen Bausch, Mall of America’s executive vice president. “That’s what Disney and all the great attractions do. You never keep it the same.”

This fall, construction is scheduled to begin on the next piece — a $250 million addition on the mall’s north side.

That addition will add perhaps 50 new shops, an atrium for public events, an exhibition space for traveling displays and an upscale Food Hall to replace the existing north Food Court. A second luxury hotel and an office tower also are included.

But even bigger changes are on the drawing board, as the megamall reaches north to fill up the old Met Center lot.

“I can foresee us probably opening a new development every year for the next 10 years,” said Kurt Hagen, senior vice president of development for Triple Five Worldwide, the mall’s owners.

These expansion plans have been discussed for years, but then, nothing happened. Then in May those plans received a jolt when the Legislature approved a $250 million tax break for MOA, as lawmakers were drawn by the promise of more tourism, more construction jobs and more economic development.

The Mall of America is already a tourist destination, especially for foreign consumers who make the trek to Bloomington. Some 42 million visitors come to the mega-mall each year, ranking it among the nation’s top tourist attractions. The Phase Two expansion is projected to draw 20 million a year more.

“I’m constantly amazed as I travel overseas how many people associate Mall of America with Minneapolis and say they’ve been there,” said Jim McComb, a Twin Cities retail analyst. With its new plans, “They’re looking to build on that strength and build on that draw.”

What will future visitors find? Some plans are solid, while the more distant dreams are a lot hazier. Here are the plans right around the corner.

— Phase 1C: pushing north

This fall, construction is scheduled to begin on a $250 million addition, dubbed Phase 1C, that will expand the mall to the north — the first of many northbound additions.

The three-level expansion will be added to the existing three-level mall. It will add about 50 new stores — a fairly modest number, at least by Mall of America standards.

But it will serve as the foundation of all that comes later, creating the start of a shopping stretch called Central Parkway, that will guide the mall’s growth northward.

— Event spaces

MOA hopes to amplify its role as a gathering place for community events with two new features in the 1C addition.

The first will be The Atrium, a slightly larger gathering spot than its existing big public space, known as the Rotunda, on the mall’s east side.

“We’ll program them both. We need them both,” Bausch said, citing events that MOA now has to turn away because its Rotunda is already booked.

The second addition will be a permanent exhibition space. In its existing fourth floor space, MOA has already booked popular traveling exhibits, including one on Princess Diana, and is considering others, like one on Barbie.

As the number and quality of these traveling exhibits grow, MOA wants a larger dedicated space that will help lure visitors.

— Food Hall, not a food court

The existing north food court is in for a shake-up, and not just because it’s in the way of construction. The food-court model seems to have fallen out of fashion.

“Nobody has food courts anymore; they have food halls, and you want interesting partners with fresh bread and cheeses and wines,” Bausch said.

Bausch envisions a place for grab-and-go higher-end food offerings — sushi, pasta — similar to what you might find at a luxury supermarket or gourmet restaurant.

This will mean saying goodbye to some tenants in the north food court. Some of those leases are due to expire soon and won’t be renewed, she said. But some have longer-term leases that must be honored, so not everyone is departing.

The food court overhaul will likely take place late in 2014 or early in 2015.

— A second hotel

This past spring, a 500-room Radisson Blu hotel opened for business on the mall’s south side. But that turned out to be just the first of several hotels on the drawing board.

This fall, construction is slated begin on a second hotel, a 330-room luxury hotel on the mall’s north side. The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux community has signed a provisional agreement to own that hotel, which pleases mall officials, due to the community’s local connections and long affiliation with the mall.

The new hotel will be operated under a nationally known luxury name, and officials say they are close to signing a deal.

Along with the hotel, the project includes a medical office building — and two stories of underground parking, allowing MOA to offer valet parking to shoppers, which is now offered only by a couple of its department stores.

— Upgrading the existing mall

Mall officials are careful not to focus all their energy on new construction. Corridors in the existing two-decade-old mall will continue to receive upgrades, too.

Two of MOA’s four main corridors already have been upgraded. Next up is the overhaul of West Market, the wide corridor with the barrel metal roof. Its $10 million overhaul is slated to begin when the Christmas holiday season is over, and will require more time to rehab.

The renovation will add skylights to lighten up the gloomy corridor, remove the carpeting, streamline its design and remove some of the fussy and distinctive fixtures.

“The philosophy of designers has changed,” Bausch said. “In 1990, it was all about ‘theming,’ so people knew where they were. … Now the school of thought is, you give them a white palate, a canvas, and you let the retailers provide the color.”

— Lindau Lane

Heavy equipment is at work on Lindau Lane, the roadway between the mall and Ikea. That roadway is being lowered so that future mall expansion can literally bridge over the busy road.

This project, which also relied on taxpayer help, is slated to reopen next summer. Once complete, officials say it should solve one of the trickiest obstacles to developing the old Met Center lot.

The problem, senior vice president of development Hagen said, was “How do we get this (busy road) out of the way to make it one contiguous project?”

Then the stage will be set to kick off Phase Two, Mall of America’s long-awaited $2 billion expansion.

Tom Webb can be reached at 651-228-5428. Follow him at twitter.com/TomWebbMN.