Botswana Railways mall to open October

LEKOPANYE MOOKETSI
Correspondent | Friday June 17, 2011 00:00

 

The managing director of Botswana Railways Properties, David Tsheboeng said that the new mall to be known as Rail Park, is expected to be opened in October, and will be located beside Gaborone station. 'We are left with four months to complete and five months to open,' he said.

Tsheboeng said progress at the construction site has been going well.  'I would say there are no major concerns.

We meet twice every month with the contractor to review progress.  There are no issues of major concern on site as we speak,' he said.Tsheboeng said the 34, 000 sq metres shopping complex is almost fully let.  'We still have a lot of applications.  At this stage we are not receiving more applications,' he said.

While the Botswana Railways offices in Gaborone will be located at the new mall, only a couple of units will be availed for office space.

Tsheboeng revealed that their anchor tenant is going to be local retail giant, Choppies and a South African supermarket that is known as Food Lovers.

The mall will be occupied mostly by retailers with a food court that will include restaurants and take aways.

Unlike the other super malls, small traders will be catered for.  Tsheboeng spoke about plans to provide a lot of cubicles for the informal sector.  'We have made provision for that,' he said. 

The cubicles will be rented out to people with hawkers' licences.  'We have so many applications but we have not allocated the stalls yet.  We will be looking at people with hawkers' licences.

Generally when you have a shopping complex, you will always have vendors.  We will allocate them formally so that they don't scatter around the mall.' He said they have also reserved parking space for about 20 taxis and combis. The multi-Million Pula project is a joint partnership between Botswana Railways through its property subsidiary BR Properties, BIFM, Eris Botswana and Tredinnick.  BR Properties owns close to 70 percent of the project. 

The opening of the Rail Park shopping complex towards the end of the year will add to the numerous super malls that have been built in Gaborone.

Two other malls are under construction at Sebele along the Gaborone/Francistown highway.  One of the new malls is expected to be opened next year.