Do you want to take a moment to guess how much space we're talking about here?
About 6.58mil sq ft of retail space will be made available in the second half of this year. After doing some basic calculations and discovered that this is equivalent to about 114 football fields.
According to The Star, a report by Knight Frank's Real Estate Highlights revealed that 11 malls are expected to complete very soon, with the largest space coming from Empire City Damansara Mall, followed by Tropicana Gardens and Central Plaza @ i-City.
Here's the complete list of malls we can expect by the end of 2018:
But more retail space also means more pressure for occupancy and stiff competition for existing and incoming tenants in an already crowded market.
The report states that retail space per capita in the Klang Valley is one of the highest in Malaysia at approximately 7 sq ft per person.
"The current concern weighs more on the completed retail stock that have yet to be filled and this puts further pressure on occupancy levels going forward," it read.
In recent times, Malaysians across the board have also expressed concerns about the oversupply of malls we have, especially in the city.
when colleagues ask me ‘what are there to see in malaysia?’ I say ‘to be honest, if you’re outdoorsy, we have beautiful rainforests; if you’re not, tough luck, but at least we’ve got massive malls everywhere’. https://t.co/Xg1vCNdzWZ
— mogi | ꡤ (@aksarasabda) September 2, 2018
Malaysia have tooooo much malls dah. Pleaseeeee build something else. ? https://t.co/TXIDjLy0s0
— Nia (@niababbling) September 1, 2018
Omg yes. Too many malls. Give me libraries, studios, coworking spaces, hacker spaces, workshops, schools, theatres...
— QueerMalaysia: Cyan (@QueerMalaysia) September 3, 2018
This. Malaysia instead of building more malls, build more cool libraries https://t.co/v2ZoTZAMHv
— Sofea (@sphya_) September 4, 2018
Don't get us wrong, we don't hate malls. We're actually very proud to know that Malaysia has some of the largest malls in the world!malaysia really does have too many shopping malls I looked out the window of my new room and found that I can see FIVE shopping malls guys. FIVE.
— aliyyah (@masteraliyyoda) July 18, 2018
But that amount of space could definitely have been converted to different types of buildings to give us more things to do on weekends and public holidays. Just saying.
It's the age of online shopping after all!
"To remain competitive due to rising popularity of online shopping, the retail segment has been banking on securing tenants with services and experience factor such as food and beverage, beauty and dermatology and sports and entertainment," Knight Frank stated.
Having said that, Kuala Lumpur City Hall has reportedly frozen new approvals for this kind of projects temporarily to address the growing inbalance in supply and demand, especially in the retail sector.
So, do you agree with seeing more shopping malls in town? What do you wish to see more instead of new malls in the near future?