New shopping experience coming as RMB Westport perfects Osapa Convenience Centre
For Lekki-Epe residents, a new shopping experience is underway as RMB Westpoint, a new but dynamic player in the Nigerian real estate market, is sparing no effort at ensuring the delivery of its Osapa Convenience Centre by the last quarter of this year.
RMB Westpoint is also a major player in the commercial office space market and is significantly involved in the development of The Wings, a twin tower, 14-floor office space coming along the highbrow Ozumba Mbadiwe Street, Victoria Island, Lagos.
Sitting on a large land mass of about 32,000 square metres, the new convenience centre presents a new innovation to retail centre delivery given its uncommon blend with a Grade ‘A’ office complex on the same premises.
Presently known as Osapa Convenience Centre, the developers disclosed to BusinessDay that the project was being rebranded in order to bring its identity more in line with local trends and tastes, adding that a new name would be disclosed before year end.
About 40 percent completed on the construction side, the mall promises approximately 10,800 square metres of exceptional quality retail space, while the office component boasts of 3,700 sqm of state-of-the-art office space, both set for delivery by November and December of this year respectively.
“Rather than a destination mall, the project is designed to take advantage of the exceptionally high traffic volume along Lekki-Epe Expressway in order to provide busy consumers with a way to quickly and effortlessly pop-in to do their groceries and shopping,” Michael O’Malley, director, RMB Westport, told BusinessDay in an interview.
The retail section features the Carlifonia-styled Open Mall convenience shopping, complete with shaded walkways, umbrella’s on the fast food strip, cool courtyards beneath the offices, generous landscaping and 373 parking bays to ease movement flow for shoppers and clients.
According to O’Malley, tenant response to the project has been encouraging with the retail centre attaining a pre-let of over 50 percent of Gross Lettable Area (GLA), pointing out that the terms of the anchor tenancy have been agreed with Shoprite and negotiations were already underway with a number of other sub-anchors and line-shop tenants.
“Shoprite is confirmed as the anchor tenant with other well-known brands such as fashion retailer, Mr Price, furniture house, Lifemate and clothing label, Jack and Jones all signed up,” O’Malley said, adding that in a bid to also offer shoppers the desired shopping experience, prominent food franchises such as Rhapsody’s, Barcelos, KFC and Sumptuous Meals will all be present at the mall.
BusinessDay gathered also that the project would be the only convenience centre along the Lekki-Epe expressway, catering specifically to the needs of commuters on their way to and from work.
ODINAKA MBONU