The new and iconic Arena Mall in Nsambya has Wednesday opened its doors to the public in what is going to be a phased opening that will see the shopping center fully let by Easter of next year.
The 13,800 square meter mall owned as a joint venture between Chestnut Uganda and South African asset manager, STANLIB, is expected to change the face of southern Kampala with a tenant mix that will feature retail showrooms, a supermarket, coffee shops, popup markets, state-of-the-art cinema. Food court terrace, restaurants, banks and general stores.
Over $40m (over Ushs 140bn) was sunk into the iconic mall as investment (land and construction), according to Charles Odere, one of the Directors in Chestnut Uganda.
According to property consultancy, Knight Frank Uganda, which manages the ultra-modern architecture shopping center, Arena Mall will open at 30 percent tenant occupancy and this will gradually increase to 55 percent in January 2022, and 95 percent by Easter (April 2022).
“This is subject to the fully reopening of the economy in January and no more lockdown measures,” Marc du Toit, the Head of Retail at Knight Frank Uganda told reporters in Kampala on Tuesday.
He said the mall has 80 shops in total at the moment but this is not constant.
On Wednesday, LC Waikiki opened its doors to shoppers with a 20 percent discount at its Arena Mall shop, the fashion retailer’s second store in Kampala. The Turkish ready-made clothing powerhouse deals in quality trendy fashion products.
Four to five days later, Cafesserie and its Frango fried chicken restaurant will also open shop.
Carrefour, an internationally operated retail franchise will also open its seventh store in Uganda at the mall, as the anchor tenant. This is after Carrefour acquired Shoprite’s business in Uganda. Shoprite was initially set to anchor the Arena mall.
Arena mall will offer unparalleled shopping, dining and entertainment experience to the fast growing population of some of Kampala’s most affluent neighborhoods of Bunga, Munyonyo, Muyenga and Buzinga.
Wednesday’s opening also launched a popup center, a first in Kampala’s shopping center experience. The popup center is an incubator model that will give informal startups (which lack capital) space to test their products in a small low-cost capital environment for a 5-7 month period. If they get the experience and capital, they will graduate from incubator to the real life.
International fashion brands like Umbro, Puma, Adidas, Skechers, Woolworths among others will set up shop at the Arena somewhere between end of December and April 2022.
“We are still impacted by the global logistics chains. We cannot say that everybody (tenants) will be open 28th of February, it’s a work in progress. We are not opening a fully let shopping center, not because we don’t have the tenants or there is no demand. The impact behind everything happening in the world has slowed the opportunity to open the mall,” Marc du Toit explained.
He said it would however be unfair to stop tenants like LC Waikiki, Cafesserie and Frango who are ready to operate, from opening shop so as to wait for April.
The cinemas will open 82 days after the government has reopened the economy.
Delays
Construction of what was at the time East Africa’s first pre-let shopping center (it was 70 percent let at the time) began in November 2016.
Marc says construction was planned to last two years and opening set for December 2018.
It was around that same time that government commenced the development of the Kampala Flyover project. Government would later notify the Arena mall developers that their property was in the Kampala Flyover corridor. This challenge and the negotiations that ensued disrupted the construction.
In 2019, construction resumed with the new opening date set for March 2020. Unknown to the developers, this timeline would be again hampered by a global pandemic which forced many countries into lockdowns and restrictions that badly affected logistics especially from China. This affected the constructing and tenanting of the mall.
Knight Frank adjusted the opening to March 2021 only for Shoprite (which was initially set to anchor the Arena mall) to get an offer from Majid Al Futtaim (which owns Carrefour) to acquire Shoprite’s Ugandan business.
The process of this acquisition further caused delay since ideally, the mall would need a supermarket business to drive its footfall. The media reports about Shoprite’s ‘exit’ also made other tenants jittery considering many were banking on an anchor business for traffic.
It wasn’t until September this year that Carrefour made its acquisition of Shoprite stores in Uganda, public.
