The Dubai Mall is the world’s largest shopping mall based on total area and sixth largest by gross leasable area. Located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, it is part of the Burj Khalifa complex, the 20-billion-dollar project has 1,200 shops. Access to the mall is provided via Doha Street, rebuilt as a double-decker road in April 2009.
Twice delayed, Dubai Mall opened on November 4, 2008, with about 600 retailers, marking the world’s largest-ever mall opening in retail history. However it is not the largest in gross leasable space, and is surpassed in that category by several malls including the South China Mall, which is the world’s largest, Golden Resources Mall, SM City North Edsa, and SM Mall of Asia.
The Dubai Mall has recorded a visitor turn-out of more than 60,000 tickets sold for the Dubai Aquarium and Discovery Centre in the first five days, following its opening. The Dubai Mall has hosted over 3 million visitors over the month of April 2009, while the mall attracts more than 750,000 visitors every week.
Description
Over 12 million sq ft (equivalent in size to more than 50 soccer fields), the Dubai Mall has a total internal floor area of 5.9 million square feet (55 ha) and leasable space of 3.77 million square feet (35 ha), about same as West Edmonton Mall.It surpasses the previously largest mall in the Middle East City Stars, which is located in Cairo, Egypt. With a gross area of over 8 million sq feet (74 ha), City Stars had been the largest mall in the Middle East since 2003.
The Dubai Mall has 10–15 distinct ‘malls-within-a-mall’, totaling 9 million ft² (84 ha) of shopping retail space (comprising of a total of 1200 stores, when fully operational). Featured attractions include: the world’s largest Gold Souk with 220 retailers; the 850,000 sq ft (79,000 m2) Fashion Catwalk atrium; Fashion Island (Avenue), with 70 stores dedicated to haute couture; the Middle East’s first Galeries Lafayette department store; Oasis Fountain Waterfall; and WaterFront Atrium. Other attractions include the region’s first SEGA indoor theme park, SEGA Republic covering 76,000 sq ft (7,100 m2); KidZania, a 80,000 sq ft (7,400 m2) children’s ‘edu-tainment’ centre; a 22-screen Cineplex, the largest in Dubai; and The Grove, an indoor-outdoor streetscape with fully retractable roof. It also features over 160 food and beverage options, 220 gold & jewellery outlets; a supermarket and an organic food mart. Among the shops is British toy store Hamley’s, which opened a 32,000-square foot (3,000 m²) store that includes a replica of London’s Regent Street, with the franchise owned by Retail Arabia.
