City malls fail to turn into shopper’s paradise
Sukhmeet Bhasin
Tribune News Service
Bathinda, June 2
The mall culture is yet to pick up in the city, long ago after the two pioneer shopping malls, City Centre and Peninsula, were constructed at a high cost. The malls seems to have failed to attract the shoppers, who still prefers to shop from Ludhiana and Chandigarh.
Both these malls that were supposed to give a boost to the mall culture in the city are lying nearly deserted as majority of the shops are lying vacant. The City Centre only has two brands Cafe Coffee Day (CCD), Subway along with a couple of other shops and Big Cinemas which bring some footfall to the mall.
The Peninsula Mall, that was opened by the HBN group, is also facing the same fate as many of its shops are also lying vacant.
While opposite to them, another mall in the city Mittal Mall is the one which is known to be running successfully. This malls has become an entertainment destination with the food court, eating joints, kids play zones and large number of branded showrooms.
“We were elated when the City Centre mall was to open in city as this was the first mall of the region as we felt there would be no need to go to Chandigarh, Ludhiana for shopping now. However, there are no attractions here,” said Sana Jaggi, city resident.
Ankush Aggarwal, a city resident, said he is quite disappointed with both the malls not running well. He stated that the location of the City Centre mall is perfect but he doesn’t understand why it is not running well.
A real estate expert stated that that over 80 per cent of the malls in India are below average performing assets. “It’s (the mall) not being treated as a specialised asset class that it is. Most of the centres are under-performing on account of poor retail planning, weak mix of tenants and bad management. Most centres are currently facing all of these issues and hence are in bad shape,” he added.
He also stated that Bathinda is a small city. There is a demand of just one mall and there are three that has resulted in a huge oversupply of retail space and the satellite city just does not have the potential to absorb the volume.
Realtors here feel that the rents in these malls are unrealistic, making them not viable for retailers. “There are no takers for the shops as the rents are very high. The mall developers have failed to come to terms with the recession in commercial realty space, and continue to quote rates that were viable two years ago.
