Mall Commercial Developments in Kenya.
1. What is the role of an anchor tenant?
An anchor tenant is a tenant that attracts a very high number of customers to a mall. Their role is to become the source of customers so that other tenants in the mall can also benefit from this high traffic. The architectural design is usually done in such a way that the customers walk past most shops so as to reach to the anchor tenants, increasing chances of impulse buying for the shops within the mall.
2. Must an anchor tenant be a supermarket?
Any business that has a high number of visitors can act as an anchor tenant. Some anchor tenants are hospitals, power/water utility payment offices, fast food, petrol station etc.
3. Recently, many anchor tenants, (supermarkets) have been in trouble, Uchumi, Nakumatt, and now Chippies. What options do developers with such large lettable space have ? For example, can a restaurant be an anchor tenant?
Developers can change the anchor tenants with one that is perfectly running. If its a failing supermarket, they can change it to a better one e,g Karen Crossroads mall had Nakumatt as its anchor tenant. When Nakumatt closed, they quickly brought in Tuskys as the anchor tenant so as to provide the customer numbers required to drive business to the other shops within. Equity bank was also serving as an anchor tenant but with less traffic than the supermarket, so it held the forte for a while as the mall managers organised for the supermarket replacement.
4. Is the concept of the anchor tenant a global concept in malls?
Yes, the world over, malls usually have more or less the same operating principles of pooling resources to be able to offer better services and options to their visitors. A good architect knows where to position the anchor tenant shop so that the rest of the shops can benefit from the high traffic.
As the old adage says, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, the trick with malls world over is to improve on the attractability of the honey to the flies, resulting in more customers.
Architect Francis Gichuhi Kamau.
info@a4architect.com
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