{"id":819004,"date":"2025-03-31T21:52:12","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T19:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=819004"},"modified":"2025-03-31T21:52:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T19:52:18","slug":"good-news-about-south-africas-biggest-shopping-mall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/property\/819004\/good-news-about-south-africas-biggest-shopping-mall\/","title":{"rendered":"Good news about South Africa’s biggest shopping mall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fourways Mall has announced significant improvements in leasing, foot traffic, and overall retail performance over the last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accelerate Property Fund, which co-owns Fourways Mall with Azrapart, revealed this improvement in a trading update on Monday, 31 March 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourways Mall is the largest shopping centre in South Africa, with a gross lettable area (GLA) of over 178,000 square meters and around 350 stores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It became the largest shopping mall in the country after an extensive expansion and revamp in 2019, which cost north of R1 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The expansion did not work out as planned. From 2021 to 2023, Fourways Mall\u2019s vacancy rate increased from 3% to 8%, and net rent per square meter declined from R298 to R262.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its fair value declined from R9.6 billion in 2020 to R8.04 billion three years later, and its performance continued to deteriorate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accelerate was forced to take drastic action. It embarked on a turnaround plan and partnered with Flanagan & Gerard as asset managers and Moolman Group as the property managers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It invested in improved signage and security, introduced new tenants, installed backup power, optimised traffic flow, enlarged parking bays, and revitalised the surrounding area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest trading update showed that the turnaround strategy is starting to show results, with a significant improvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourways Mall demonstrated a strong upwards trajectory, closing the 2024 calendar year with significant gains in leasing, foot traffic and overall retail performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shopping mall’s festive season trade reinforced its growth, with a 9.5% increase in total spend compared to the previous year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe independent retail experts, Flanagan & Gerard and Moolman Group, have significantly impacted lease renewals,\u201d Accelerate said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They attracted new tenants and shoppers to the Mall and renewed 121 leases totalling 46,972 square meters of gross lettable area (GLA) for an average of 4.2 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strong letting activity and extensions reduced the mall’s vacancies from 19.0% in the prior financial year to 13.4% for the year under review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFurther new leases with a combined GLA of 27,515 square meters have been concluded to date or are in the process of being concluded,\u201d Accelerate said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accelerate Property Fund and Azrapart invested approximately R144 million in Fourways Mall in the year under review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This investment has mainly been allocated towards enhancing the overall shopper experience, focusing on lighting, signage, ingress and egress, security, and waterproofing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A significant portion of the mall’s planned capital spending will be applied to a 50,000-square-foot roof structure on the upper-level parking deck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This will be followed by the installation of a 6 megawatt solar plant at a total cost of R222.4 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fourways Mall<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Fourways Mall has announced significant improvements in leasing, foot traffic, and overall retail performance over the last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":774229,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12755],"tags":[19940,22177,19746],"class_list":["post-819004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-property","tag-accelerate-property-fund","tag-azrapart","tag-fourways-mall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":819005,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819004\/revisions\/819005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}