SINGAPORE: It is a Monday afternoon and Kinex mall is quiet, save for a stream of shoppers at the basement supermarket.One of them is Ms Ronda Ng, but she is there only for her groceries, and nothing else.Just down the road, the area by Paya Lebar MRT station - home to three malls - is bustling.Ms Ng is spoilt for choice, but it might be too much of a good thing. Singapore, she feels, has too many shopping centres.
With retail moving online, it’s becoming harder for some malls to stand out, she said. “They all have the same shops, same restaurant, same chains, too many.”Ms Ng is not alone in thinking so. In recent years, retail units sitting empty have made headlines, spurring concerns of oversupply.
Kinex mall was quiet on a weekday afternoon. (Photo: CNA/Erin Liam)
Several retail units at Northshore Plaza 1 and 2 closed after being hit by rent hikes and competition from a newly opened mall nearby, CNA reported in April last year. Later that year, businesses at Leisure Park Kallang saw declining footfall and declining sales following the closure of Cold Storage, its anchor tenant.Even Singapore’s iconic shopping belt, Orchard Road, is undergoing rejuvenation efforts as the area loses its edge to heartland shopping areas and regional shopping districts.The issue might not be about oversupply, experts said. Instead, it reflects a deeper dissatisfaction with too many familiar and unsurprising mall concepts.TOO MANY MALLS?On paper, the numbers suggest a healthy supply of malls in Singapore.According to Savills, there were about 69 million sq ft of both public and private retail net lettable space in Singapore as of the first quarter of this year.This means there is 11.3 sq ft of retail space for every person, taking Singapore’s population of 6.1 million. This does not indicate an oversupply, said Mr Alan Cheong, the executive director of research and consultancy at Savills.The figure is similar to Hong Kong's and lower than those of the US and Canada, which have a higher retail space per capita of 23.5 sq ft and 16.8 sq ft, respectively. By comparison, Europe sits on the lower end with a retail space per capita of 4.5 per sq ft.
