Word: golden
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Beijing's golden resources mall ought to be a shopper's paradise. Built on the city's outskirts in 2004, the Art Deco-style center boasts a staggering 6 million sq. ft. (560,000 sq m) of retail space, making it the world's second largest mall, 30% bigger than Minnesota's famed Mall of America, once the largest. Golden Resources accommodates more than 1,000 shops, dozens of restaurants, 230 escalators and an ice-skating rink. On its five floors, you can buy everything from fur coats to exercise equipment to pet supplies...
...There's something missing, though: shoppers. On a recent Monday afternoon, despite blazing temperatures outside, the only crowd to be found in the air-conditioned expanse of Golden Resources is a gaggle of shopgirls on their breaks. The few customers loitering around appear to be just window-shopping. Nearly half of the mall's original restaurants shut down in the first year after opening. The parking garage's 10,000 spaces host a handful of cars. Xiao Chen, a shoe salesman, states the obvious: business stinks. "Monthly sales here are not as much as a weekly sales in other stores...
...Golden Resources' barren parquets are less the exception than the rule in China these days. Rampant overdevelopment of retail space and too-optimistic expectations about the spending power of the country's growing middle class have produced a plethora of gui gouwu zhongxin (ghost malls) in the nation's metropolises-megacenters like Golden Resources that are struggling to attract shops and consumers. Although retail sales throughout China have been growing at 12% a year and in 2006 totaled $800 billion, during China's recent construction boom far more retail space has been added than the market can absorb. More than...
...surprise that retail-property developers seem to be trying to outdo each other with giant construction projects. The mainland already hosts the world's largest shopping center, the 7 million sq. ft. (650,000 sq m) South China Mall in the southern manufacturing city of Dongguan. Like Golden Resources, South China Mall suffers from a dearth of stores and shoppers. Yet more megamalls are on the way. By 2010, China expects to be home to seven of the world's 10 largest shopping centers...
...Meanwhile, retailers at Golden Resources say they have little choice but to hang on in hopes that customers will eventually discover the megamall. Xiao, the shoe salesman, is upbeat. "The store manager always tells us we should persevere, it will be getting better," he says. It's hard to imagine things getting worse. As a mall security guard dryly observes: "On weekdays we have so few cars, this must be the best parking lot in Beijing." Unfortunately for the builders, it's a parking lot attached to 6 million sq. ft. of unloved retail space...