Underground Shopping Malls Half Empty

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Do you walk through an underground shopping mall to catch the train? It probably has a drugstore, food court and a coffee shop.

Commercial property developers did not know that securing anchor tenants like banks and vendors for the food court, won’t be a guarantee for success anymore, especially in underground malls.

It used to be easy. Build an underground tunnel that connects office towers to a banking mall and divide it into retail space: jewellery, tourist gift shops, hair salons, stationery shops, greeting cards shops, florists or luxury clothing shops. All that business moved to the shopping mall for many reasons.

1. The mall buys in bulk, therefore has cheaper prices.

2. Underground malls are ghost towns after 4 p.m. when most offices close for business.

3. Underground malls do not have any business over the weekend, because office workers take the family to the mall.

4. The shopping mall is a place to go for no apparent reason, an outing for the kids, a community hall of some sort.

Despite the falling demand for office space due to what is called the recession, online shopping, virtual business meetings, digital devices, businesses going off-shore and other reasons, there is some construction of office towers in your city.

Why? Commercial property developers did research and it indicated that they should join office and home, hence condominium development next to office towers.

Buying a home in the sky or on a piece of land is not a cash transaction. The bank gives you a loan because you have an income, the salary from your office job for example.

If the office is gone, how do you pay for that condo they are building adjacent to your office building? All this happened before COVID-19, so we should be careful about blaming the virus for the bungee jumping of commercial real estate.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang

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