“Let alone the price factor, we were not getting any retailers in our project Hi-life at Santacruz. As developers we have to finish a project and move on to the next one. Instead of waiting for two years, we took a call to let out our mall for commercial use and we immediately found takers for one entire floor,” said Mukesh Patel from Neelkanth group.

Another upcoming mall at Prabhadevi as well as a newly constructed mall at Bhuleshwar are amongst the ones to join the commercial bandwagon. Property analyst point that that a successful mall in central Mumbai has been witnessing their retail tenants periodically changing while another one in Malad has been of late seeing lower footfalls than before after the opening of a new mall in the nearby suburbs.

Besides the slump, analysts state that in many cases the decision to convert upcoming malls projects into commercial has been fuelled by a September 2008 state government notification allowing IT parks to utilize 80% of the total constructed area for financial services and banks. IT parks that are allowed to build double the area allowed for normal buildings were initially allowed to let out only 30% of its space for activities other than IT and IT enabled services.

Developer Vimal Shah, who had earlier announced plans for Akruti city mall at Andheri is amongst the many who will now construct a commercial project in place of the mall. Shah states that one reason for his choice is that in India anchor stores (the chief attraction at a mall meant to draw customers) offer very low rents. “It is so low that to make up for it the other retail stores in the mall are charged heavy rents. This makes it difficult for them to remain in the malls for long,” said Shah.