20 more sprawling malls in Chennai coming-up soon!

Chennai: Only three malls in the last 13 years but 20 in the next three, that's how Chennai's retail landscape is set to change with 81 lakh square feet of additional retail space.

The new malls want to cash in on Chennai's increasing cosmopolitan nature.

Says MD, Ampa Center One Mall, Ampa Palaniappan, "We had to refuse a lot of large brands. We have about 80 retail stores in the mall out of an an enquiry base of about 450 which have actually come to our office."

The reason for this demand could be that Chennai has only three malls or 8 lakh sq feet of retail space, so brands targeted at youngsters like McDonalds and Apple are waiting to make their debut in Chennai's new malls.

But why the sudden rush to build malls in Chennai? Well first, it's practically virgin mall territory with only three malls, among the lowest numbers for an Indian city.

Mumbai has 45 malls, the National Capital Region 42, Bangalore and Pune eight each and even Kolkata has six malls. So why has Chennai been late to catch up?

Experts say it was the conservative image of the city which had prevented malls from coming up. Now, that's being replaced by images of affluent youngsters working in the new economy.

Says Regional Director, Trammell Crow Meghraj, N Ananthanarayanan, "The service industry has picked up and it has given scope for a lot of young people to earn money at a fairly young age and they all want to spend."

The Tamil Nadu government estimates more youngsters will move to Chennai in the next three years, at least 5 lakh to work in the city's I-T, electronics manufacturing and automotive sectors. This would change perhaps not just the image but also the shopping habits of the city.

The Spencer Plaza, which started with a built up area of 3,00,000 sq ft, has now become the mega mall of city with 1.05 million sq ft. The pricing has gone up from Rs 18 to Rs 22 per sq ft per month in 1991 to the current Rs 60-100 per sq ft per month.