The South China Mall was opened expecting to attract hundreds of thousands of daily visitors yet it has been dubbed the ghost mall.
Despite boasting an incredible seven million square feet of leasable space over five floors, the promising South China Mall remains largely vacant.
The ginormous complex opened in 2005 estimated to bring in over 100,000 visitors daily, but didn’t quite go to plan.
For 10 years, less than 10 percent of the mall was occupied by lessees. In 2011, this figure dropped to a mere one percent despite the capacity for about 2,350 retail premises.
The biggest mistake made during the build was reportedly the choice of location. Developed on a former farmland in Wanjiang District 34 miles from the Dongguan city centre, there are no direct transport links.
The surrounding area is also largely home to migrant workers on lower salaries, meaning the high-priced offerings at the mall were largely out of the locals’ budgets.
The initiator of the project was billionaire Hu Guirong, known for revolutionising the instant noodle industry. Dongguan was his hometown which he planned to improve, so he decided to build an immense shopping centre.
According to the New York Times, the mall cost around $1.3 billion to build.
The layout is organised into seven zones, each representing a city, country, or region, such as Amsterdam, Venice, Paris, Rome, Egypt, California, and the Caribbean.
Designers spent two years scouting locations for these zones around the world, and large parking lots were built in anticipation of a large number of drivers.
Despite its complex structure being built like a city with long arcades serving as main roads, individual buildings serving as neighbourhoods and large open spaces which resemble parks, the mall is primarily ground floor now.
A few businesses, mainly fast-food restaurants catering to families visiting the amusement park and IMAX cinema adjacent to the mall, continue to operate.
Rejuvenations have been taking place and instead of renting spaces to expensively priced shops, the mall is leasing spaces to more affordable businesses to appeal to the local market.