En route to success

Being part of the NCR, Ghaziabad is fast catching up with the mall culture. Around 20 malls have come up in the last few years. Brix Research reports
The malls at Ghaziabad boast of the biggest apparel brands and some of the best eating joints, in the country. This, apart from other important reasons like better connectivity, contributes to the ever-rising footfalls at the Ghaziabad malls. Also, the fact, that residential complexes are being developed at a fast pace, the numbers in these malls is increasing by every passing day.
Builders in the area: Recently, Ghaziabadbased SVP Group launched the “Opulent Mall”, which is located on the G T Road - this 100-crore project offers 3,50,000 sq ft of space. It will also provide two levels of parking, three shopping levels, and one entertainment level with 1,45,000 sq ft in retail area. Additionally, the mall will have a hypermarket from Bharti Retail. This would be a midsized hypermarket with 32,000 sq ft of space.
Mushrooming of malls: Some of the malls that came up in the last few years in Ghaziabad are East Delhi Mall (Kaushambi), Shipra Mall (Indirapuram), AEZ Carnival Country Mall (Vaishali), Pacific Mall (Sahibabad), Galaxie (Sahibabad), The East End Mall (Kaushambi), One Mall (Indirapuram), Kaushambi Mall (Kaushambi), Aditya Mega Mall (Indirapuram), Park Plaza (Indirapuram), Premier Mall (Indirapuram), Eros Market Place (Indirapuram), Aerens Europark (Sahibabad), Shopprix Mall (Kaushambi), MMX Mall (Mohan Nagar), Reliable City Mall (Vasundhara), Ashiana Citimall (Ghaziabad city) and Mahagun Metro Mall (Vaishali). Ansal launched a unique mall, named Ansal Plaza (Factory Outlet Mall) in Vaishali. Ansal Plaza has around 8 stores in the market. FoodPlus - a supermarket and family store, Hidesign - a leather outlet, Mega store - a multi-brand factory outlet, Otik Food Plaza - a fast food joint, Prime Honda - Capital Cars Pvt Ltd, Reebok - Factory Price Shop, VIP - luggages and Vishal Mega Mart. Ashiana Citimall is the first mall-cummultiplex in Ghaziabad. The other popular malls that are near Ashiana are within a maximum radius of 24 km. ED Mall is located just 14 km away, Pacific mall 13 km, Ansal Plaza 11 km, Arean’s Euro park 9 km, MMX 7 km, Shipra mall 12 km and Centre stage (Noida) 24 km away.
Parking issues: Most malls in the NCR today are cramped for parking space, especially on holidays and weekends. Today, developers realize that the number of customers one gets is directly related to the number of cars that can be parked in a mall. Arean’s Europark, 7.5-lakh sq ft mall, in Ghaziabad has a provision for parking 1,000 cars. Two years ago, several malls in the NCR were in dire straits. Developers sold off space to retailers and investors, and, having made their profits, wiped their hands off the project. With poor maintenance and no promotion, the malls turned into disasters - empty shops, low footfalls. Sometimes high footfalls but poor conversion to sales left retailers fuming. Occupancy rates improved with a fortuitous turn of event - the demolition drive, last year, which led to many brands migrating from the high street to malls.