Sunlight gleams on almost every common area of the enormous shopping mall. Shoppers in small groups are taking pictures in front of art installations here and there. Cafes are occupied. Some retailers are still organising their merchandise and draping mannequins.
Phoenix Marketcity, a new destination mall with over a million sq.ft. of shopping space that can house over 300 retail brands, 11-screen cinema theatre, food courts, fine dining restaurants and cafes, a club and an amphitheatre, is humming now.
“The idea is to make this complex a destination by itself. It is not just about shopping and dining. We want to promote art. We have art installations by artists from all over India,” says Vijay Choraria, Managing Director, Sharyans Resources Ltd, pointing to ‘Chitti’ — a huge robot sculpture named after Rajinikanth’s Enthiran.
“We will keep changing them every few months,” Choraria said.
Every place is meticulously designed. For example, there is a separate access to restaurants so that people who want to go to restaurants, need not necessarily walk through the shopping area, particularly after the shops down their shutters,” he explained.
There will be over a dozen anchor brands such as Lifestyle, Marks & Spencer, Big Bazaar, Pantaloons, Globus, Max, Splash, Luxe and Imax (by Sathyam Cinemas), Reliance Digital, Croma, Funcity, Homestop, and OOD life. There is also a host of first-time brands in Chennai including Imax, Speedo, Manchester United and Rosso Brunello.
“We just did not want high-end brands, as it may intimidate middle-class consumers,” he says. To maximise footfall, developing the right tenant mix is critical. “Our understanding of the Indian consumer has been sharply honed through our developments across the country.” In this mall, in particular, it has a lot of local brands such as Rmkv, Basics and Vasantha Bhavan.
As of now, over 30 per cent of the shops are up and running. “We expect the rest to be in place in the next couple of months,” he says.