Outside, long snail queues and irritating traffic made it worse.
Set to house over 300 shops, the 130 000m2 with 24 entrances, features top retails such as Inditex’s Zara, Hennes & Mauritz (H&M), Cotton On and Starbucks and so on.
Despite the euphoria on the opening of the mall the set back could be high interest rates.
“Interest rate hikes and slower salary increases will limit the employee’s ability to spend. This is bad news for large item sales like cars and furniture. It is likely that retailers will struggle for real growth in the next few months,” said Mike Schüssler, chief economist at Economists.co.za.
Another issue was the overbuilding of malls around Johannesburg.
“The good malls will do well but there is a risk that there has been a little bit of over building in South Africa. There is a lot of property retail space in South Africa. Is there really another mall that size required in South Africa? I am not sure,” pointed out Portfolio manager at Gryphon Asset Management Reuben Beelders.
On the positive outlook, thousands of jobs have been created particularly for youth’s.
Limpho Kekana, store manager at one of the fastfood outlets says she looks forward to the workload after years’ of unemployment.
“Its been hard times especially being a single mother of two kids,” says the jubilant Kekana, who requested not to mention the outlets name.
Meanwhile, an abundance of journalists struggled to obtain interviews from the mall’s management as a result, let alone being notified of the presence of Gauteng Premier David Makhura.
