Call me old-fashioned but I’ve never gone to Jozi and thought ‘you know what this place needs – more malls’. But what do I know, I’m just someone who likes swimming in the ocean and staring at the mountain.

Say hello the Mall of Africa, set to become one of the continent’s largest shopping malls when construction finishes towards the end of April this year. You want more details you got them, with this below from Business Tech:

While the development occupies the biggest space for any mall on the African continent (485,000 square metres), the shopping space itself is “only” 131,000 squares – which is smaller than the 220,000 square metre Gateway Shopping Centre in Durban –  the largest mall in Africa.

According to developers, Atterbury Property Group, the new complex is South Africa’s and Africa’s biggest single-phase shopping mall ever built – larger than Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront and rival to Sandton City.

The new site will boast over 300 shops, and will play host to a plethora of local and international brands. It will have over 7,000 parking bays.

H&M, Zara, Hamleys, Cotton On and Forever 21 are among international brands opening flagship stores, Attebury said, while anchor tenants include Edcon, Woolworths, Game and Checkers Hyper.

Lets take a look at the concept and how it should turn out:

And then some snaps from the construction process, initially budgeted at R3,2 billion but now ballooning to R5 billion.

One gets the feeling we may be looking at an awful amount of overtime in the weeks between now and the end of April.

As someone mentioned in the comments section you poor Jozi folk are getting malled to death.

[source:businesstech]