The Edge - Tropicana Gardens Shopping mall to open its doors by 4Q2019
Located in Kota Damansara, fronting Persiaran Surian, is Tropicana Gardens, a 17.6-acre mixed-use development by Tropicana Corp Bhd. It comprises four residential towers, a corporate office tower and a seven-level retail mall.
"The lower ground floor will mainly be parking and service outlets such as clinics.The fourth floor, which is the highest, will comprise the exhibition centre and Kids Wonderland. So, the shops will mainly occupy the concourse to third floor" he says.
There will be four levels of basement parking with about 3,000 bays. Andrew says some parking bays will be reserved for women, but the exact number has not been decided as it depends on the location of the escalators and entrances to the mall.
The anchor tenants are Village Grocer and MBO Cinemas, which will take up 51,000 sq ft and 80,000 sq ft respectively. The 50,000 sq ft exhibition hall will be managed by exhibition organiser i.Star Ideas Factory Sdn Bhd. Other tenants include Daiso (8,000 sq ft),Secret Recipe Cakes & Cafe (4,000 sq ft), Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (1,800 sq ft) and Cotton On (8,000 sqft).
The current take-up of the retail space is 31%, and that is expected to increase to 53% in six months' time,says Andrew."We are in the final negotiation stages [with some brands] right now. By the time we open the mall in the fourth quarter of 2019, before Christmas. We are confident will hit 90%.
As for the design of the mall, Andrew says the developer is taking a step away from the conventional box shape. Part of the mall will be open air with a canopy overhead, similar to the food and beverage walkway at Pavilion Kuala Lumpur.
"This open-air section will be open after 10pm. It will house a beer garden and some quick-service restaurants. So, rather than driving away from the mall after 10pm, people can still come and have some food. This is another point of differentiation for this mall," he says.
The development is accessible via four major highways the Damansara-Puchong Expressway, Sprint Highway, New Klang Valley Expressway and Penchala Link. There is also a purpose-built underpass at Persiaran Surian that links directly to the basement car park.The underpass also heads towards Kuala Lumpur.
Less than 50m away is the Surian MRT station,on the Sungai Buloh-Kajang line. A covered link bridge provides access to the mall from the station. Opposite the mall are shophouses, which house 15 bank branches, among other businesses.
"When someone alights at the station, they can go to the shophouses to get their banking done and after that, they can use the same bridge to get to the mall on the other side " says Andrew.
Residents of Tropicana Gardens can access the mall directly via a lift.
The demographic within a 15-minute drive is the middle to upper-middle income group,which isTropicana's target group. Townships in the area include Sunway Damansara, Bandar Utama, TamanTun Dr Ismail, Kelana Jaya and Petaling Jaya.
Asked whether it would be affected by other malls in the area such as lUta-ma and The Curve,Andrew replies that Tropicana is not competing with them.
He says that even though the retail sector is slow in general,he is confident the mall will do well. "Apart from these 'five Greats', we are working with great retail partners such as Village Grocer, who has 60 years of histoiy. Village Grocer and MBO Cinemas are going to do something different with the space in the mall," he says.
When the mall opens, he expects a footfall of one million shoppers per month.The MRT can cany about 400,000 passengers a day and it can bring in potential shoppers, Andrew says..
