Trung tâm mua sắm lớn và vắng nhất thế giới
5 năm sau, New South China Mall đạt được một danh hiệu hoàn toàn khác, tai tiếng chưa từng có. Với tỉ suất sử dụng chưa tới 2%, New South China Mall rộng 660.000 m2 là một trong những điểm mua sắm trống rỗng nhất thế giới và là một trong những trung tâm mua sắm to nhất từng được xây dựng. Những con kênh dài 2,1 km theo kiểu Venice chạy xuyên khắp “trái tim” của trung tâm, với nhiều cửa hiệu nằm sát nhau đã đóng cửa không lâu sau lễ khai trương ầm ĩ. Những quảng cáo hứa hẹn “Thời trang 2006″ treo cạnh “ma nơ canh” tại một hiệu quần áo bị bỏ hoang. Hàng loạt quầy hàng chưa bao giờ có một người nào thuê.
Nửa tá thuyền gondola theo kế hoạch sẽ chở những vị khách đã mệt mỏi sau khi mua sắm từ cổng này sang cổng khác của đại siêu thị, đã không bao giờ được dùng đến nằm dưới tấm biển đá “cầu San Francisco” và những người chèo thuyền thì không thấy đâu. Trong suốt vài giờ lang thang khu mua sắm rộng lớn này vào chiều 1/10, phóng viên Mark Mackinnon của báo Globe & Mail chỉ thấy một nhúm khách.
Khi người Trung Quốc bắt đầu tiêu tiền, ý nghĩ trên đã được phát triển. Khi kinh tế thế giới bên bờ cuộc khủng hoảng thứ 2 trong vòng ba năm, rõ ràng là cuộc cách mạng tiêu dùng ở Trung Quốc vẫn chưa thành công. “Đôi khi các nhóm khách du lịch từ các thành phố lân cận như Quảng Châu hoặc Thâm Quyến tới đây song họ không được chỉ tới những khu trống rỗng” Hu Xiaocui, một người bán vé buồn rầu tại phòng chơi Teletubbies – điểm hoạt động duy nhất trên tầng 3 của New South China Mall nói.
New South China Mall được thiết kế để đón trung bình hơn 70.000 khách một ngày tới thành phố Dongguan, song thực tế chỉ có vài khách tới đây. Điều gây tò mò nhất về New South China Mall đó là trung tâm mua sắm này không phải độc nhất vô nhị. Các đại siêu thị phần lớn là trống rỗng là hình ảnh thường thấy ở nhiều thành phố tại Trung Quốc. Hiện, nhiều khu mua sắm lớn vẫn đang được xây dựng trong khi hàng triệu mét vuông không gian bán lẻ vẫn không có người thuê.
Hoài Linh (VNN / Globe Mail, Daily Mail)
‘New South China Mall’: World’s Largest–and Empty
‘Build it and they will come’ has not worked for new ‘South China Mall’. Opened in 2005, the largest mall in the world is still 95% empty. Joe Christian analyses why.
The South China Mall, in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, is the largest mall in the world. With 7 million square feet of leasable area, it is more than twice as large as the Mall of America, the largest mall in the US.
It has seven zones modeled on international cities, nations and regions: Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Venice, Egypt, the Caribbean, and California. It features a 75-foot high replica of the Arc de Triomphe, a replica of Venice’s St Mark’s bell tower, a 1.3-mile long canal with gondolas, and an amusement park that features a 1,800-foot indoor-outdoor roller coaster.
The mall has room for an astonishing 2,350 stores, but unfortunately, 95% of its retail space is still vacant six years after it opened in 2005. And, foot traffic for the shops is nil.
Before looking at why the fail has so far failed (below), here are two videos that capture the mall’s ghostly mood:
- Bloomberg video, 2 & 1/2 minute, that shows the difference between the dream and the reality:
- And, if you would like to see more, an excellent 13 minute video by Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker Sam Green that film premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast on PBS’s documentary series POV.
http://www-tc.pbs.org/video/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf
Watch the full episode. See more POV.
Now, why the mall has failed so far?
There are several likely reasons, but chief among them are the inaccessibility of the mall by rapid transit or a highway system and the lack of spending power of the residents of Dongguan. Dongguan is a city of 10 million people, but its residents are low wage workers in the many factories in this part of China and cannot afford to shop in the mall.
So, how could someone build the world’s largest mall, replete with expensive Disneyland-like features such as a fully operational, two and a half million square foot amusement park, featuring an indoor-outdoor roller coaster, and zones within the mall modeled after several international cities – including Venice, with the obligatory canals and gondolas, without doing the basic homework on the feasibility of the project?
One explanation might be that since property laws were first enacted in the 1980s and until relatively recently, real estate development by Chinese developers consisted mainly of large scale residential projects that were pre-sold to end users well before the completion of the projects. There was huge built-in demand for the units in the projects resulting from China’s rapid urbanization and wealth creation, so there was really no need for anything approaching a detailed feasibility and market study.
Other varieties of real estate development were and still are relatively new in China and developers simply do not, even today, generally have the expertise or experience to put together these highly complex projects. Certainly, retail development on the scale of the South China Mall was not something that typical developers were familiar with.
And, the developer of the mall was not a typical developer. The man who spearheaded the development, Alex Hu Guirong, was a Dongguan native who became a billionaire in the instant noodle business!
The driving motivation behind this project may have been Mr. Hu’s desire to showcase his new-found wealth, or it may also have been a gargantuan example of the seemingly insatiable desire of Chinese to own real estate. It was probably a combination of the two.
But, it was also a classic example of the “build it and they will come” syndrome, other examples of which can be found all over China, in its zest for creating new “cities,” and elsewhere in Asia.
Whatever the motivation, as a Bloomberg article (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&refer=home&sid=aHdszWoQEitA#)
on the subject notes, “South China Mall stands as a symbol of China’s failure to stimulate more spending by its 1.3 billion people and to curb runaway investment in real estate projects.”
There are, of course, many other failed retail malls in all parts of the world, but malls usually fail because tenants leave for one reason or another. South China Mall is strikingly unique in that it never got off the ground. But never fear, in 2007 it was renamed to New South China Mall, so tenants and customers can’t be far off, can they?
The Dongguan Today website http://www.dongguantoday.com/cityguidec.asp?id=648 has beautiful pictures of people enjoying the mall, and the amusement park, which is the only part of the mall that experiences any noticeable volume of traffic.
After describing the mall as having “the feel of a living city, with shopping, tourism, leisure, entertainment and catering options,” it goes on to say that, “You can spend days on end here and never get bored.”
Tell that to the few current tenants of the mall, who see very few customers on any given day!
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