Dubai: For Dubai’s next generation of niche malls, it’s the age of specialisation. A new one scheduled for opening this September in the Al Barsha area will only feature products and services to set up and maintain a home.
That means furniture and accessories, anything that would liven up the interiors, and even electronics stores with home theatre offerings. But there will be no space for fashion outlets at the ‘Art of Living’ mall, which is being built by the MMS Group and with 322,000 square feet of leasable area.
“The furniture and home accessories market is pretty scattered in the city,” said Samer Al Omari, CEO at MMS Global. “First you had all these outlets opening on Airport Road and then another set being created later on Zabeel Road. But these were all individual stores. And every decade or so, the focal point for the home furnishings business keeps changing in Dubai.
“What Art of Living is attempting is to bring all the requirements consumers need for their homes into a single mall-type development. We wanted to consolidate all of the requirements under one roof. And you know why?
“Because the Al Barsha location is the gateway to all of the developments being created next door in Dubailand. That’s a captive market.”
- Samer Al Omari | CEO at MMS Global
Based on conservative estimates, well over 7,000 new homes could be added in the various projects at Dubailand in the next 26 months.
Clearly, there is also a bigger strategy at work here. Dubai’s mall developers are gradually moving away from offering the same kind of stores and entertainment options. The feeling in retail industry circles is that the market will soon consolidate around a few mega malls. And the rest will have to have something extra in them to be able to command a regular traffic.
sq ft of leasable area the Art of Living Mall to have
It could be location, it could be the F&B options or an entertainment destination that is within reach of residents within the mall’s immediate catchment area. Any slip up by mall owners in providing these, and shoppers could well decide to go somewhere else. And then there is always the threat of what online shopping could do to the fortunes of Tier-2 malls.
For the Art of Living Mall, the developer seems to have made a good enough start. About 250,000 square feet of leasable area has already been booked, and talks are on to fill up the two anchor store locations.
said to be range of investments on the mall development
“On average, we are asking for leases at Dh400 a square foot,” said Al Omari. “But as is the case in any such leasing activity, there will always be some adjustments made depending on tenant requirements for space, etc. We haven’t seen VAT costs as much of a factor in finalising lease agreements.
“We do have a three-stage process on the leasing, just to make sure we get the tenant mix right. The tenants have to complement each other’s business and not be in direct competition.”
Investments on the mall development are said to be in the range of Dh600 million plus. The overall built-up area of the mall is 508,000 square feet. This is the MMS Group’s first exposure to the mall business.
Dubai has got a fairly good pipeline of mall/shopping centre projects in the works, most of which will come online within the next two years. Al Barsha and its immediate areas are seeing quite a few of the medium-sized shopping and entertainment clusters. Jumeirah has already seen this transition to a new set of boutique malls where shopping is just part of the overall experience mix.
