There are two sides of a coin when talking about retail industry today. There are no clear conclusion as the facts may vary according to circumstances during this challenging times.

First of all, I'm talking in the perspective of a mall operator not a retail shop owner. A mall that generates income growth continuously, example like those in the REITs does not necessarily mean that an individual retail shop tenant they have are doing well.

Yes size is necessary to bring anchor tenants. And at this times, yes, it is not necessary that big malls will mean better (refer to this week's Focus M), but generally this is the rule of thumb for retail consultants advising developers. This is the worst case scenario. Anchor tenants pay the lowest rentals but they are required to bring the traffic footfall, at least this is my opinion.

I worked with some of the biggest names in retail consulting as I was working in a developer. Retail consultants adviced us not to build malls that are too small like less than 300,000 sq ft as we will be neither big or small, and if small, we will not be able to achieve sufficient footfall for tenants and we will not be able to bring anchors (small also means lesser carparks).

Only a very small % of small to mid-sized malls are doing well, at least financially. Bangsar Shopping Centre used to be one of the top performer for neighbourhood mall. Mind you, the shops in Solaris Dutamas are not part of Publika Mall management and in Publika, anchors like BIG contribute almost majority of their income while the rest are not doing really well. Alot of neighbourhood malls like Cheras Leisure Mall and Main Place Mall are heavily dependent on certain F&B tenants and key tenants like their supermarket and they do not necessarily reflect growth in mall operator's' income because some of these tenants rental rates are low to begin with especially supermarket.

In recent times, out of a dozen malls that opened over the last many years, most of them neighbourhood malls, most of them don't do well. One mall that might stand out is probably the best of all of them is IOI City Mall, which is a big mall, not a neighbourhood mall.

Pavilion KL has a net lettable area of 1,335,119 sq ft with a gross floor area of 2,202,557 sq ft, and hence its a mid-sized mall that we have. There is no word that I was saying it was doing well, although on the mall operator level, there is a relatively so-so income growth (read Pav REIT) due to renewals and higher rentals for some tenants. On the individual retail tenant perspective, not all tenants are doing well, and yes there are tenants that have sales crunch during this times.

Some of our big malls do practise accrued rentals... so some tenants have been owing their rental payments for months. Many malls today also do track their tenant's sales performance. But the bottomline is some of our more established, big malls are still able to RAISE rental income especially towards F&B tenants signifying income growth.

For the size that Pavilion BJ has, I think it has great potential and it has a great chance of succeed if you look at their brief. It has large cineplex, a large entertainment feature and large foodcourts and these will drive the traffic of its catchment market Mad.
(The most recent mall leasing event that I attended is EkoCheras Mall. It might look quite promising but I have comments which is another day's topic.)