Malls 'mauled' in Chandigarh

With the real estate taking a beating in Chandigarh, it is not only the residential property that is suffering, the commercial property has also started showing signs of collapse.

According to the local property dealers, the shopping malls in Chandigarh are facing the heat, with most of the malls in the city finding it hard to lure the store-owners, leave alone the customers.

The local property dealers maintain that occupancy rate in most of the malls in Chandigarh is not as developers ideally would have liked and is hovering between 40-50 per cent. Kamal Jindal, general manager, Berkley Realtech, who looks after the booking in these shopping malls, said that no positive signs have been received by the developers of these malls in Chandigarh.

The Uppal’s Centra Mall that was slated to open long way back, continues to grapple with problems. Even thought the company officials maintain that occupancy in the shopping mall is close to 60 per cent, local realtors feel that these claims are far from reality. Spread over an area of 1,25,000 sq feet area, Centra Mall has around 54 walk-in stores.

Similarly, the DLF City Centre in IT park, spread over an area 1,90,000, is reported to have around 50 per cent occupancy rate.

Jindal says that the City Emporio Mall, which is yet to be opened, is reported to have occupancy rate hovering around 30-40 per cent. He added that the reason for malls not picking up in Chandigarh could be plenty.