UNDETERRED by a slowing economy, five shopping malls are expected to open in Futian District this year, with three of them to open in the coming two months. Malls are also remodeling themselves into recreation venues instead of just shopping.

    Shenzhen will see a influx of new shopping malls this year, with 21 to be unveiled. Futian District will have most of the new malls. Among the five malls to open in the city soon, three are located in Futian, although not the central business district. KK One in the Xiasha area will open at the end of May, while the Sinus Iridum Palace in Meilin and EP Mall in the Donghai area are expected to open in the second half of the year. The Zhongzhou πmall and Gongle City Shopping Mall will open in Bao’an District. The five malls will supply the city with 370,000 square meters of retail space.

    Among the five Futian malls, INJOY Mall in the Meilin area will be the largest. Fashion Me Go in the Huaqiangbei area will cover an area of 20,000 square meters.

    The 21 malls will supply the city with 1.2 million square meters of retail space, and three of them, INJOY Mall, Liantou Oriental Park and Tianyi Times Square, will cover areas of more than 100,000 square meters.

    All the malls are devoting an area catering to kids’ brands, with some having dedicating 40 percent of the mall to restaurants. Catering and kids’ brands have been expanding rapidly in all shopping malls in the city in the past year. In 2015 mall area dedicated to kids’ brands rose by 40 percent from a year before, according to DTZ.

    There was no new shopping malls in Shenzhen in the first quarter of the year, and malls in Futian and Longgang districts were all fully occupied. The city vacancy average in malls is 2.4 percent, according to the Savills’ Shenzhen division. Up to 70 percent of Shenzhen shopping mall tenants were restaurants and clothing sellers in the first quarter. The average rent slipped 3.9 percent from a year ago to 875 yuan per square meter per month.

    Shenzhen ranked eighth among Chinese cities in terms of new shopping mall supply last year, with 470,000 square meters of malls completed in 2015, but ranked second in terms of mall area under construction, at 3.6 million square meters, according to the CBRE Group. The city boasted more than a dozen shopping malls covering a total area of 2.39 million square meters at the end of last year. Over the next two years another 2 million square meters of retail space will be put into use, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

    Shenzhen does not show any sign of reaching the saturation point yet, according to Steven McCord, a research director with Jones Lang LaSalle.

    “The old times when one city had only a few large malls have passed,” said Hua Tao, executive director of Shenzhen Retail Business Association. “Nowadays most shopping malls serve nearby communities instead of the whole city. Their functions are also changing.”(Liu Minxia)