AsipacISMs

  • Malls with multiple owners are recipes for disaster.
  • More parking means more footfalls, more footfalls means higher sales.
  • For a mall to succeed, there cannot be “landlords” and “tenants” – rather, there have to be “infrastructure partners” and “retail partners”.
  • Good Strategic Retail Facility Planning is KEY to a mall’s success.
  • A mall is not a real estate project – it has to be run like a hotel or airport business.
  • Trade & Tenancy Mix Planning has to be specific to the mall’s catchment.
  • A mall’s tenant mix has to cater to a large share of the consumers’ shopping basket.
  • The inside of a mall is more important than its outside.
  • Less than 25% of malls will actually succeed.
  • Footfall Frequency Drivers are as important as high rent payers.
  • Leasing has to be done in accordance with a Strategic Letting Plan.
  • In the Indian context, accessibility to a mall is much more important than LOCATION.
  • Success of a Mall is directly proportional to the number of Car Parks.
  • A 1,000,000 sft Mall has a better chance to succeed than two 350,000 sft Malls in the same location.
  • Retail works best with hospitality and offices, less with residential.
  • All large office parks / complexes should have some retail, especially F&B.
  • We need to plan for 8-12 lane inter-city expressways and 6-10 lane access-controlled intra-city highways, if India does not want to STOP GROWING in 4-5 years.
  • Main roads in urban layouts/colonies should be 45m wide, not 30m; other secondary roads should be 18-24m wide, not 9-12m like today. All sidewalks/pavements should be minimum 2.4m wide.
  • All Parks / water bodies should be provided with ample parking spaces.
  • Water will become costlier than diesel if we continue like we are for the next 30 years.
  • It should be made compulsory for all real estate developments over 2 million SFT to put captive power generation facilities.
  • Government should encourage development of new satellite townships.
    Government should encourage development of new satellite townships of 3000 to 20,000 acres each, within 30 Kms of airports in Tier-III cities. This should only be tendered to pre-qualified consortia where the lead investor (with minimum 33% stake) has minimum annual revenues of Rs.30 billion and minimum net worth of Rs.10 billion.
  • Cities should permit up to 6.0 FAR/FSI in the CBDs, so that infrastructure costs are kept low.
  • Consuming maximum permissible FAR/FSI is not always the most profitable answer – in some cases, LESS can be MORE.
  • There is no need to sell on “Super” Built-up Area – the customer is not a fool.
  • CAM should be percentage of rent, so tenants who can afford higher rent pay higher operating cost also.
  • Mall leasing should be on carpet area, so it becomes easier to compare properties, budgets, mall sizes and trading densities.