Mirdif City Centre reflects balanced growth strategy

• Text size
•  
•  

"Mirdif is in line with the company's strategy to develop large destination malls in the three most important trade areas of Dubai — Deira City Centre in the heart of Dubai, Mall of the Emirates in the southern new Dubai area and now Mirdif City CentreMirdif City Centre to service north Dubai and the northern emirates. All three malls can now provide UAE residents and visitors with the widest range of retailing, leisure and lifestyles choices found in any great city in the world," Peter Walichnowski, CEO of Majid Al Futtaim PropertiesMajid Al Futtaim Properties, said at a press conference.

According to Walich-nowski the new mall is estimated to have created over 16,000 jobs in the development and construction process and 5,500 permanent jobs in the mall complex.

The mall aims to serve a population of 450,000 within a 10-kilometre radius along with the communities across the rest of Dubai and other emirates and tourist footfall.

Retailers mark debut

Mirdif City CentreMirdif City Centre is also set to be the first shopping centre in the Middle East to achieve a gold rating for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

The mall offers over 75 restaurants and cafes with Tiffinbites and P.F. Changs making their debut in the region and other food favourites such as Butcher Shop and Grill, Mango Tree Bistro and Pinkberry.

Edutainment facility

Majid Al Futtaim Leisure has also opened Aquaplay, a water-based edutainment facility featuring water games and rides aimed at children aged between two and eight.

At the other end of the mall will be Playnation, an entertainment zone for children and adults with interactive leisure concepts such as iFLY Dubai an indoor skydiving centre, Soccer Circus, a fully interactive football attraction, Cite des Enfants, an interactive learning zone for children, and Yalla! Bowling, a 12-lane cosmic tenpin bowling alley.

"Mirdif is about families. It's a community mall so it was important for us to make our leisure offering as key to the community as possible," Craig Hart, vice-president of Majid Al Futtaim Leisure, told Gulf News.

Walichnowski, who is targeting 20 million visitations a year for the centre is confident that as consumer confidence picks up, the footfall in the mall will increase along with a pick-up in sales.

"The year 2009 was a difficult year for the retail industry. Sales in our two malls dipped below those of 2008 but our foot traffic did not. This demonstrates that our malls are still attracting a loyal customer base and that visitations to malls in Dubai are still very high. In fact the numbers from DSF were better than that in 2009, which would indicate that consumer sentiment is returning and the worst is over," he said.

The group's future plans include 10 malls across the Middle East and North Africa in the next five to ten years.

"We aim to replicate the success which we've had in Dubai in the rest of the region," Walichnowski said.

fact box

talking business

Gross leasable area - 196,000 square metresTotal value- Dh3 billionParking - 7,000 spacesTotal number of shops- 430Dining - 75 restaurants and cafes

By Aya Lowe

© Gulf News 2010. All rights reserved.