7/30/2019 Story 05Lesson for Dying Malls
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EMERGING MARKETS INSIGHT 22
An ineffable air of desolation and
despair hangs over the Star City
Mall, situated on one corner of east
Delhis Mayur Vihar Phase 1 (a
commercial/residential area in East Delhi).
Over three quarters of the retail space
inside is an empty glass-fronted shell, wait-
ing forlornly for tenants. And by the looks
of it, the wait has been on for a long, longtime now. Few
customers ever walk into the
mall and those who do dont stay for
long. A couple of liquor shops and a Caf
Coffee Day outlet draw much of the minis-
cule clientele that the mall can boast about.
But these are transient visitors who dont
linger.
At Star City Mall, there is really nothing
that the mall offers in terms of shopping or
entertainment options that will make a cus-
tomer walk in and spend any time noanchor department stores, no
big brands, no
theatres, no specialty shops, no electronic
shopping zones, no playing areas for chil-
dren, and not even a proper food court.
There are a few eating joints and restau-
rants scattered on the ground floor. But
these do not look as if they have ever been
stretched by having to serve too many cus-
tomers.
A short walk away from Star City is the
DLF Galleria another shell of a mall,
sporting the same air of pathos as its neigh-
bor. Almost 90 percent of its retail space is
unoccupied.
And yet, when Star City was being built,
most analysts would have bet on it being a
success. Its location is excellent Mayur
Vihar is a middle-income colony full of
successful professionals who are ideal cus-
tomers of many malls in Delhi and Noida.
More importantly, by virtue of being righton the Delhi-Noida
link road, and with a
metro rail station adjacent to it, the mall
was ideally positioned to attract traffic from
both east Delhi colonies adjoining Mayur
Vihar and the nearby suburb of Noida. The
Star City Mall also opened with Reliance
Retail as its anchor tenant three-and-a-half
years ago, and that should have helped it
attract other tenants. Yet, within months of
its official opening, the footfalls had started
falling and the decline in customer traffic
had begun. After almost three years of its
tenancy, Reliance Retail abandoned its
space, which accelerated the malls demise.
What went wrong with Star City? The
malls developers were unavailable for
comment, but Reliance Retail officials say
that there were many inherent problems.
One of the biggest issues was that the mallwas not and is still
not actively man-
aged. After building Star City, the develop-
ers sold off shop spaces to individual inves-
tors.
Many of these investors were not interested
in improving the mall; they were only look-
ing to rent out the spaces they had bought.
There was no mall management company
or in-house operations team that would get
the tenant mix right and improve the overall
well-being of the mall. That was why it wasjust a disparate
collection of shops with no
specific zones for entertainment, food,
apparel, or electronics. It also lacked a the-
ater which may have been able to pull peo-
ple in to see movies and then stay and shop.
Even though Reliance Retail was the
anchor tenant, shoppers had no reason to
stay in the mall once they had finished with
that store.
The Star City Mall is not an exception in
There is really nothing
that the mall offers interms of shopping or
entertainment options.
