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The little girl enjoys the wall with the painted piano. When she presses the keys, a tone sounds. "We are often here – it's convenient for us – our daughter does not stumble because the mall is almost never full," says the girl's mother
Wednesday afternoon, and the dense flow of visitors to the Swiss shopping center in Ebikon near Lucerne, there is life on the first floor of the shopping center, and a dozen boys throw championship balls on the artificial turf. designed, which also welcomes the public.Two teenage girls huddle on the leather armchairs. "We often come here. There are nice shops and few people.
Instead of a temple of buzzing consumerism, the Mall of Switzerland seems to be Switzerland's most expensive playground right now. Investors from the emirate of Abu Dhabi invested 450 million francs in the project. Eight months after opening, the mall is struggling with significant revenue problems. As the research shows, the sales of the 65,000 square meter shopping center are not even where they were expected. "The management is extremely nervous," says a guarantor
"If we extrapolate the annual business figure with current figures, we will not even get a quarter of the revenue we budgeted for." [19659005] Representative of a large branch
This is not surprising because the stores rented in the mall say, "If we extrapolate the annual business figure with the numbers current, we will not even get a quarter of the revenue we have budgeted, "says a senior representative. one of the largest branches. It's "catastrophic," he says succinctly. Another smaller tenant says, "In the beginning, things were better, but now the frequencies have gone down, I'm happy not only to depend on the mall, but also to sell online." Stores in the best locations, Escalators on the first floor or next to the Migros on the ground floor are most likely to be satisfied.The operators reported two million visitors after six months.Thus, despite the effect of Positive opening, the shopping center has already fallen behind the annual target of five million visitors Paradox: The Emmen center, closer and much smaller, has welcomed more visitors since the opening of the center
The pressure is now so strong that now a project group is looking to the future of the prestigious building of Central Switzerland.The owners of the Mall of Switzerland Abu Dhabi have evidenced At the center of the discussions is the question of how to use the retail space in the attic, still half-rented, in the future. It is about 3000 square meters.
We are also talking about rental opportunities outside the retail trade. "Conceptual adaptations are being developed for the retail space in the attic floor," says Jan Wengeler, CEO of Mall. At the same time, there are discussions with potential buyers. Also check out an "interesting temporary use". He does not say what conversion he thinks. The apartments will hardly be possible because of the architecture – conceivable are more offices or leisure facilities. Not all spaces are rented on the other floors, although the management of the center speaks of an occupancy rate of 80% on all sales areas.
Too big, in the wrong place, too little innovative [19659002] More than six months after the opening, redevelopment plans are already in place: the skeptics are right to see the problems of the gigantic project launched in 2005: the Mall of Switzerland is too big, the location of Ebikon is for such dimensions the bad, and the store mix is lacking in brightness. Brands such as Topshop, Uniqlo or Primark, which are not yet present in Switzerland, could attract customers. However, far reaching has not come, as major international brands usually prefer big cities. Add to this the fact that the situation in the Swiss retail business has changed dramatically in the three years preceding the opening of the shopping center: while the overall business turnover of the industry was declining, e-commerce increased by 8.7% to 8.6 billion francs. This shift of business to the Internet is now painfully felt by shopping centers. Making the Mall of Switzerland a success story in this environment would be a Herculean act
Operators grant renters significant rents
It would not be the first shopping center to change direction. The Stücki Center in Basel started as a high-end shopping center. Sales were missing. Today, he says, "We are no longer a commercial center." The Stücki-Center becomes Stücki-Park. From here 2023, this should become a center of work, health, adventure and shopping. For this, the store area will be reduced by two-thirds. Such extreme scenarios are not yet expected at Ebikon, but more than minor course corrections are expected from the project group.
On September 13th, the long-awaited indoor surfing wave will finally be open in the center. "We found an excellent operator," explains Jan Wengeler. The German entrepreneur Jochen Schweizer, who was originally there, is no longer in the boat. In addition, the first pop-up stores that had rented in the mall, the sails were canceled, as the direction confirms. This includes, for example, Tesla. The US manufacturer of electric cars was at least longer than expected and benefited from the still high attendance at the beginning and during the Christmas business.
Conversion associated with additional costs
The children's shop "Mutterparadies" extended. "An extension was out of the question for us, it just did not matter," says co-founder Isabel Rodriguez. "The mall has too much space, at least one floor too much."
Management argues that ephemeral stores were planned for a limited time anyway. However, as we can hear from the tenants, the Center is still trying to persuade the stores to stay. Fixed equipment rental stores obviously benefit from significant rents that were offered to them in the pre-opening period. This helps to amortize low income. But for the mall this is of course anything but positive. And possible reuse would entail additional costs.
It is unclear whether investors will go back to the cash register. Sheikhs may need to park their money in Switzerland. A conversion of even a partial area is not so easy. The first vacant Swiss shopping center in Chiasso should have been turned into an office building – the plan failed. (SonntagsZeitung)
created: 07.07.2018, 21:28
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