eBusiness Weekly
Africa Moyo
Harare’s aesthetics could be transformed in the near future with new malls in the mould of Old Mutual Zimbabwe’s Eastgate Market, being constructed by private property developers who have already inundated the Harare City Council with expressions of interest to construct such structures.
The move dovetails with the Harare City Council’s drive to eliminate street vendors, who are in constant conflict with owners of brick-and-mortar businesses whose entrances they block with their wares.
Vendors have flooded streets of major towns in recent years as job opportunities dwindled on the back of maladministration of some companies and the embargos imposed by the Unites States of America and the European Union on Zimbabwe since the turn of the millennium.
Vendors, particularly those operating in front of tax-paying retailers and wholesalers, have irked the law abiding firms that have in turn summoned the assistance of the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) and Harare City Council to clean their pavements and allow them to trade freely.
Harare City Council’s housing and social services director Edmore Nhekairo, recently said there has been a “mind-set change” by property developers, who are warming up to the idea of “smart cities”.
“We have noted with concern the conflicts of vendors with established businesses; that is why we have removed them from the streets,” said Nhekairo.
“But I am happy that the mindset of some of our developers has also changed; Old Mutual, which came up with Westgate, has conceived a plan (to depopulate the cities).
“I think along Robert Mugabe Road, opposite Eastgate, you may have now noticed that they have come up with structures that are suitable for SMEs. And I think that is the route we will be following and there has been expressions of interest by quite a number of property developers who want to take that route.”
Old Mutual erected the one-stop-shop complex, which is developed diagonally opposite the Eastgate Shopping Mall, at about US$21,4 million.
The complex boasts of 11 823 square metres of prime retail space that has been configured to accommodate a range of small businesses such as fruit traders, mini-clothing shops and cellphone accessory dealers.
Old Mutual said the mall caters for about 500 stalls for SMEs and accommodation facilities for traders coming outside Harare, a supermarket and vehicle parking space.
It is also designed to have about 2 000 square metres of refrigeration facilities for fresh produce, so as to reduce post-harvest losses for farmers due to lack of proper storage facilities.
Nhekairo said while it processes the expressions of interest from property developers, the City of Harare was “awake to a lot of voids in terms of space in buildings in town”.
He said property owners were willing to consider the cost of the floor space so that they “also accommodate people who are on the streets”.
“So we are not going to tolerate people who are mushrooming on the streets, they can be housed in the CBD in spaces that are currently unoccupied,” said Nhekairo.
