The Russian Fashion Retail Market - CPM Moscow

4.3. RODNIK Shopping Center in Chelyabinsk started Operations
September 9, 2011; malls.ru
The city of Chelyabinsk saw the opening of its largest shopping and entertainment
center on September 17, 2011 under the name of RODNIK, located in the central
part of the city on a total land area of 135.000 square meters. The space offered
for lease comprises 58.000 square meters for allocation of up to 120 stores
including entertainment areas and restaurants. Anchor tenants are AUCHAN,
SPORTMASTER, DETSKIY MIR, NEW YORKER, INDITEX/ZARA and LACOSTE. The
new mall provides store facilities on four floors. With a population of 1,130 million
inhabitants the City of Chelyabinsk is located 210 km South of Ekaterinburg on the
Eastern side of the Ural Mountains, close to the border of Kazakhstan.
4.4. New Shopping Center SUNNY to open in Solnechnogorsk
September 12, 2011; malls.ru
Located on the highway from Moscow to St. Petersburg and linked to the railway
track connecting Moscow with St. Petersburg, the city of Solnechnogorsk has a
population of 58.000 inhabitants. The city looks at the construction of its first
shopping and entertainment center, which is scheduled to open in February 2012,
providing a total gross lease area of 19.000 square meters. Lease promotion is in
the hands of KNIGHT FRANK. One of the first anchor tenants moving in in
December 2011 is the grocery store ATTACK, belonging to French AUCHAN Group.
4.5. AFIMALL CITY Shopping Mall in Moscow: Reasons for Failure
September 13, 2011; malls.ru
The internet portal malls.ru published a long article on the reasons of failure of
AFIMALL CITY, formerly promoted under the name of MALL OF RUSSIA. Opening
of the mall was delayed several times until May 2011, after around 400 tenants
had moved into the building providing a gross lease area of 114.000 square
meters. Although AFIMALL attracted a strong pool of international mono-andmulti-brand
apparel retail chains like H & M, all major brands of INDITEX as well
as UNIQLO, GAP, AMERICAN EAGLE, BANANA REPUBLIC, MARKS & SPENCER such
as HOLDING CENTER or LADY & GENTLEMAN CITY, visitor attendance remained
under 20.000 people per day. For comparison, the number of visitors at
EVROPEYSKIY MALL accounted for 130.000 people per day over the summer
months in 2011.
As malls.ru concludes its opinion poll, main reason for failure of AFIMALL is that
construction of the large office towers in the new City of Moscow Area on
Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment is still ongoing. Several tall sky scrapers like
the towers of Mercury or Empire will not be finished until the end of 2012.
Therefore the target group of medium-to-better paid office employees, which
AFIMALL projected to address, is just not present around the mall. Further
reasons are lack of parking space blocked by construction, the still missing
connection of AFIMALL to the Metro-rail-system as well as a number of technical
construction failures causing rain water penetration. In August 2011, water
flooded parts of the first floor and affected damages to five anchor tenants among
which was UNIQLO, forced to close the store.
Real estate experts believe that AFIMALL will not operate properly until the
beginning of 2013. As a consequence of the disastrous results on sales, a group of
up to 50 tenants signed a letter to AFI DEVELOPMENT in common, urging the
developer to lower the lease rate for two years and to change it from a fixed rate
per square meter per year to a turnover related percentage which is now a
standard applying to 80 percent of shopping mall tenancies in Moscow, since
2009.
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