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MIDDLE EAST EVENT WILL SHOWCASE REGION’S NEW PROJECTS

By Donna Mitchell

Middle East retail real estate developers are boosting the region’s retail space dramatically, so many of them are having to learn a great deal in a relatively short time. The Middle East Council of Shopping Centres (MECS) has planned its Retail Real Estate Forum & Exhibition, set for Dec. 12-14 at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to help them do just that.

“We are going now into the third generation of regional shopping centers,” said Philip McArthur, CSM, director of leasing and marketing for Dubai Festival City, which opens this year. “People want to know how to build the shopping centers properly, and retailers want to know how to work with developers properly.”

Developers currently operate about 48.4 million square feet of retail space in the Middle East, but several projects now in the planning or actually under way could boost that by nearly 150 percent, to about 118 million square feet, according to a report by Retail International, a London-based consulting firm.

The MECSC says this year’s exhibition will showcase the region’s newest projects. Dubai has several projects in progress, including the Al-Futtaim Group’s Dubai Festival City. At press time the first phase of this giant mixed-use center, which is to contain 2 million square feet of retail, plus some office and hotel space, 19,000 residential units and a marina, had an early November opening date.

In Egypt, meanwhile, several recently built centers have opened the country up to major international retailers. There is a considerable appetite for upscale global brands, says McArthur, especially since tariffs on imported apparel were lowered. Dubai-based MAF Investments teamed up with local partner Misr to develop two Carrefour hypermarkets, according to Retail International. One of the stores occupies the Maadi City Centre, in Cairo, and the other is in the Alexandria (Egypt) City Centre. Mohieddin Rawhy, a local developer, in August opened the 2.1 million-square-foot Dandy Mall, anchored by a Carrefour hypermarket and containing about 350 in-line tenants, according to the monthly magazine Business Today Egypt. Further, the 1.8 million-square-foot Citystars Heliopolis Cairo opened last year with a mix of retail and entertainment space, 229,000 square feet of offices, some hotels, apartments and an international conference center.

Lebanon, too, is taking a turn at center stage. Despite the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, a former prime minister, in February, and a string of bombings since, several firms are pressing ahead with shopping center projects. Local firm Solidere plans to have the 1 million-square-foot Souks of Beirut up and running by 2007. And there is more for Lebanon: The Dubai-based Al Habtoor Group says it will build the Metropolitan City Centre at Sin El Fil, and MAF Investments plans to put up a mall in the town of Dbayeh, to be anchored by Lebanon’s first Carrefour hypermarket.

The MECSC says it expects more than 300 delegates from North America, Europe and the Middle East to attend the event.