A popular shopping mall in East London is reporting a bounce-back

Mall reports uptick in foot traffic and turnover since level 1

At least one popular shopping mall in East London is reporting a happy bounce-back of shoppers and turnover following the reduction to level 1 of the Covid-19 lockdown.

An upbeat Joseph Parsley, who manages Vincent Park, said the mall’s turnover in August showed growth of 1.2% and the number of feet through the door was up to 75% of prelockdown levels.

Beacon Bay Retail Park was unable to give hard numbers but said they had the edge with their open-air parking.

Despite five calls and a number of e-mails, Hemingways mall was unable to source replies to the Dispatch’s questions in time for print deadline on Monday.

Parsley’s figures on the return of retail at Vincent Park follow a back-to-shopping trend unveiled by Liberty Two Degrees (L2D, owners of top-end Johannesburg malls Melrose Arch and the Sandton Convention Centre), which stated that shopper numbers on the weekend were at 80% of 2019 levels.

L2D said Sandton City was at 85%, Midlands Mall at 88% and Eastgate almost back to normal at 97%.

While L2D’s rental collection had risen from a meagre 38% of full rental during lockdown to 74% in August, Parsley said their landlord, Old Mutual, was continuing to assist tenants with reduced rental agreements. He declined to release details, saying the agreements were privileged information.

However, Old Mutual was sticking by its leniency on rentals, which were worked out on a store-by-store basis, and this had contributed to stability at the centre, compared to occupancy rates of around 30% at centres where landlords had taken a harder stance.

He said while many other malls had seen occupancy rates drop by as much as 25 to 30%, at Vincent Park only one shop out of 88 was empty.

The mall, one of the oldest in East London, was hoping to return to normal from Black Friday on November 27, he said.

He said the pandemic had brought some permanent changes to the way people worked and shopped, and small businesses were weighing the costs of office rentals against working online and from home.

Some shoppers would stay shopping online, as they were still wary of going out to shop in public.

In general, he said, the pattern was shifting. “We are confident we will be back to normal before the festive season.”

In spite of the year’s travails, he said the centre was doing “tremendously well”.

Retail Park owners GrowthPoint Properties, who are based in Port Elizabeth, declined to give any numbers, but indicated that open-air shopping during the lockdown had cut two ways.

In a statement, centre manager Urshula Pape said because of the design of the space, the centre did not use foot counters and so had no way of accurately measuring their overall shopper traffic during the lockdown.

However, it was also because of this design that their mall had a shopper advantage during the lockdown.

She said: “Due to the layout, with the shops opening directly onto the parking area, we have found that our customers prefer shopping in our open-air environment.”

She said rentals in the centre remained “under pressure, in some categories more so than in others, but we deal with negotiations on a case-by-case basis as and when required”.

The work-from-home trend had “slightly” changed the way their shoppers interacted with the mall. “We have seen a move away from the weekday peak shopping hours to a steady flow of shoppers throughout the day,” she said.

Asked if the Edgars buyout had affected the mall, she said: “We are pleased to advise that Edgars will remain at Beacon Bay Retail Park.”

The mall’s turnover in August showed growth of 1.2% and the number of feet through the door was up to 75% of pre-lockdown levels