In 2019, Gateway Delta, a Mauritius-based company spent USD 20 million to acquire Metroplex Shopping Mall in Naalya. Metroplex Naalya sits on an area of 25,090 square meters. The Gross Building Area (all the heated and cooled areas) comes to 16,089 square meters, while the Gross Living Area (the total area of finished, above-grade residential space; calculation by measuring the outside perimeter of the structure and includes only finished, habitable, above-grade living space) is at 12,994 square metres. This makes Metroplex Naalya one of those prime locations as far as commercial real estate is concerned. With its 255 parking spaces, Metroplex Naalya is a space to die for.
The purchase was completed in August 2019, and by December 2019, the world was up and down about the pandemic and in March 2022, Uganda declared its first lockdown. Four years later, the mall has struggled with occupancy, with most of the activity being sustained by the Carrefour supermarket, the Century Cinemax, Woolworths and Aga Khan hospital clinic.
Ortega Group however understands that the mall has outlined a recovery strategy to propel Metroplex Naalya into the Ugandan mall of choice in the next 5 years. The vision is to make it a living mall, one that understands the clients that walk in, and one that sustains the foot traffic. With the increasing apartments in the Naalya estates, and the nearby areas, there’s currently no mall that speaks to all age-groups. Metroplex Naalya wants to be that mall. Basically, a mall that moves through your weekly life journey. From the time you start off the Mondays to when Sunday comes around.
In this transformation strategy, there’s an emergence of a proper dining experience, with a new restaurant having opened up- Sweetly Delicious in Naalya. It’s a spectacular, instagrammable place, offering those high floors to ceiling views. There’s no restaurant in Uganda that has landed the mezzanine floor concept as well as they’ve done. The point is, you can have dinner, head to the movies, do your shopping at Metroplex, enjoy more of the food court with Krunchix, pick up some clothing at Woolworths and other shops, check on your child’s vitals at the clinic, do a dental clinic or hair cut and then walk out. ‘To be a mall of choice, a one stop point for all your lifestyle needs, your entertainment, your essentials, that’s what we envisage our new contemporary look, feel and space design,’ one of the strategists confirmed to us.
The bigger goal here is that Naalya has branded itself as this niche suburb. It gives the best of both worlds, young and vibrant creative community. Basically, the people in Naalya behave like one big family, everything is a walk away. Naalya is like the place you live when you want to find yourself, know yourself better and unlock some creative greatness within. It’s there; syndicated between simple, not that rushed, beautiful, relaxed and it’s the kind of place where you could easily bump into a fellow that changes your life. Of course, the place has gotten more rap for the massage parlours and spas. Noritah Shulkah, one of the Naalya space designers says, ‘that’s the whole point of Naalya, we want it to be a place of expression. It’s the place you come and find awesome people in tune with themselves, and you just express yourself. Express yourself on all dimensions, open all the chakras.” If you want to know what the future looks like, everyone wakes up to create it in Naalya.
Metroplex wants to play its role in this Naalya space. It’s the reason they’ve betted on the long-term. As more foot traffic returns to the mall, as we become fully immersed in the customer’s life journey, then we become their mall of choice. Metroplex also plans to introduce the weekend creative meetups, Zumba sessions in the parking side, and other artistic projects. At the moment, you come to the mall, and you have a Paint and Sip moment. Who knows, next you have the poets take to the stage? Or breakout acoustic artistes? The goal is to have it as a co-creation front. Metroplex wants to co-create with the people that come to the mall. They don’t just want to design a mall experience, they seek to co-design it with the mall people. “We want it to be the lifestyle mall, the imagination mall, the mall that gets you back into your dreaming state, something that makes you wonder, a different world altogether, and there’s no better place to do it than in Naalya,” the strategist explains.