Tenants assured of foot falls, big business as Owerri Mall opens November

Resilient Africa, a real estate investment and development company from South Africa, has assured confirmed and prospective tenants of big business and value for money at the ultra-modern retail centre  known as Owerri Mall which will be opened in November this year.

The company also assured of right tenants mix that would encourage foot falls in the mall where Shoprite, the retail giant from South Africa, is the anchor tenant, adding that notable names such as Health Plus, Casa Bella, Kilimanjero, Da Diva, FEP, etc have already taken up spaces in the mall.

The retail centre which sits on a large expanse of land along Egbu Road at the junction close to Imo State University is a joint venture project involving Resilient Africa, Somachi Investments, Terrestrial Real Estate Partners Limited and Median Infrastructure Development Company Limited.

In an interview on the sideline of Tenants Forum in Lagos recently, Eddie Mc Donald, Resilient Africa’s Chief Operating Officer, disclosed to BusinessDay that from their research and demographic study, the population of Owerri was between 750,000  to 1,000,000 people, adding, “we believe it could be more than that, taking into consideration the population of people in the catchment area of the mall”.

Mc Donald said that besides the basic facilities  such as public toilets, water and enough parking space for well over 500 cars, regular power supply was guaranteed with two back-up generators, adding that security was also assured as they engaged the services of many Nigerian security companies.

Being in Nigeria with the intension to develop as many malls as they can within the shortest possible time, Resilient Africa has chosen to operate outside the traditional big cities of Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt and the COO explained that their decision was informed by land constraints.

“We are constrained by land availability in the big cities, especially in Lagos. Lagos can accommodate 20 malls but the problem is in finding the land. We cannot get the right land size at the right price to build the kind of mall we have in Owerri and even where you find one, the price will be too high”, he said.

Continuing, he said, “it is a big challenge to build a mall in Nigeria, specifically in Lagos, because of the unavailability of land in the city centre. Again, land value in Lagos is way too high to afford for retail development. If we have to build in Lagos at that high cost of land, the rents will be too high and that will pose a big challenge to prospective tenants”.

He noted that the second tier cities were quite accommodating as far as availability of land was concerned and the proximity of the malls was closer to GRAs than they could be in Lagos, disclosing that they had their eyes in similar cities like Abeokuta, Oshogbo, Awka,  Benin, Oyo, Calabar, etc.

Mc Donald said they have strong confidence in Nigeria and its economy which is why “in all our developments today, we have some Nigerian shareholders; we partner with these Nigerians to do these developments and that tells you the level of confidence we have in this country; we do our developments in partnership with the local authorities”.

That confidence, he added, also translates into the amount of capital they have invested in the three malls that are currently under construction which is in excess of $150 million, that is, $50 million each. The company is the owner of Delta Mall in Warri which was opened in March this year. They are also the owners of Asaba Mall is still under construction and will be completed in 2016.