The last five years have not been kind for shop­ping malls around the world.

Lo­cal­ly, two of the coun­try’s bet­ter known malls, Long Cir­cu­lar Mall and Trinci­ty Mall, were list­ed for sale with the lat­ter be­ing sold for $505 mil­lion to a con­sor­tium of re­al es­tate de­vel­op­ers—John­ny Aboud, An­tho­ny Ra­hael, and con­trac­tors Kall­Co and Fides Ltd.

How­ev­er, the C3 Cen­tre in San Fer­nan­do, owned by JT Al­lum and Com­pa­ny (JTA), is one shop­ping com­plex that has man­aged to buck the trend.

While oth­er malls have seen store va­can­cies in­crease, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the JTA team con­firmed the mall main­tained a 95 per cent oc­cu­pan­cy rate over the pe­ri­od.

Ty­rone Hilton-Clarke, the se­nior prop­er­ty man­ag­er for JTA, said the team had been pay­ing at­ten­tion to trends in a bid to de­vel­op strate­gies to keep cus­tomers com­ing back to C3, in an era when shop­ping malls glob­al­ly are fac­ing chal­lenges.

“In this lo­cal econ­o­my, you have to adapt. So we are very much about new ideas, new con­cepts. We em­brace change. So with the Gen Zs com­ing up and even our cur­rent cus­tomers, the idea is al­ways to look at the fu­ture. Hence, the in­tro­duc­tion of a food mar­ket, be­cause we saw a need in the mar­ket, and al­so we fore­see that en­ter­tain­ment is go­ing to be big. It is big right now,” said Hilton-Clarke.

Clarke ex­plained that while the JTA has man­aged to fund these ex­pan­sions and ad­just­ment by large­ly stick­ing to lo­cal cur­ren­cy, the team is aware that the for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion has been a bur­den on its clients.

“We use lo­cal re­sources to make these types of de­vel­op­ments a re­al­i­ty. So we em­ploy a lot of lo­cal providers, con­sul­tants, and con­trac­tors. Ul­ti­mate­ly, we de­vel­op these prop­er­ties us­ing lo­cal funds, ba­si­cal­ly. We cre­ate jobs and add pos­i­tive­ly to the lo­cal econ­o­my. That be­ing said, there are ten­ants with­in them all that would ex­pe­ri­ence forex chal­lenges. So by no means are we not aware of that,” said Clarke.

The team not­ed that it has been a chal­lenge as a rel­a­tive­ly new play­er in the in­dus­try as C3 has on­ly been open for nine years.

How­ev­er, he said the team’s in­vestors had shown faith in their de­ci­sions so far and were ex­pec­tant of good re­turns giv­en the con­sis­tent foot traf­fic at the Mall.

The JTA team is hope­ful they can con­tin­ue this mo­men­tum fol­low­ing the open­ing of Le Reve Con­fer­ence Cen­tre.

Ak­i­lah Re­ece, events man­ag­er of JT Al­lum Events Ltd said the new space is set to take “the event in­dus­try gen­tly by the hand and guide it to a high­er lev­el with its mod­ern de­sign, ex­pan­sive events spaces and state-of-the-art fa­cil­i­ties.”

Re­ece told the Busi­ness Guardian, “I have been in the events in­dus­try for quite some time. I mean def­i­nite­ly you would see there’s a need for a venue of this stature with­in our ge­o­graph­ic area. Most peo­ple nor­mal­ly would go to the Port-of-Spain area to get some­thing like this. And now this is some­thing that we could of­fer in the South area that’s very ac­ces­si­ble to them. C3 is a well-known lo­ca­tion. We have am­ple park­ing. Our event spaces are very adapt­able, so we could ac­com­mo­date a large num­ber of peo­ple.”

She said, “If you have a vi­sion for an event or are an event plan­ner with a client who has vest­ed their hopes and de­sires in your abil­i­ty to make their dreams a re­al­i­ty, keep Le Reve at the fore­front of your mind. Our events team is ready, will­ing and ea­ger to work with you on any project you or your client can dream up.”

Clarke said the space was cre­at­ed to ad­dress an ob­vi­ous need in south Trinidad.

“We are di­ver­si­fy­ing in­to dif­fer­ent mar­kets, dif­fer­ent av­enues. So we are very much on the fore­front of the cut­ting edge of where we can make a dif­fer­ence in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Case in point, Le Reve. That’s what South needs. It has been yearn­ing for an events des­ti­na­tion of our par­tic­u­lar cal­i­bre. I would say we are bring­ing some­thing to the mar­ket that per­sons would have gone to Port-of-Spain pre­vi­ous­ly to have an event. So if some­body can dream it, we can make it a re­al­i­ty at Le Reve, and we’re here ba­si­cal­ly to serve that need in the South mar­ket,” said Clarke.

Recog­ni­tion of such gaps is a com­mon strat­e­gy for the C3, he ex­plained.

“The idea was spawned where we saw that there was a need in the mar­ket not just to be a typ­i­cal re­tail shop­ping cen­tre that pro­vid­ed con­sumer goods and ser­vices to the gen­er­al pub­lic. But we want­ed to cre­ate a lo­ca­tion that was very fam­i­ly fo­cused and de­signed in such a way that fam­i­lies could spend more time, not nec­es­sar­i­ly the en­tire day, but more time en­joy­ing not just the cen­tre, but al­so each oth­er’s com­pa­ny,” said Clarke.

Le Reve is one of sev­er­al ad­just­ments in the team’s strat­e­gy as it recog­nised the evolv­ing wants and needs of the pub­lic,

He said, “When we opened in 2016 and 2017, we fo­cused on rent­ing out or leas­ing the re­tail and restau­rant spaces. And then we came back the last cou­ple of years to start the out­fit­ting, or the de­sign process for the out­fit­ting of the con­fer­ence cen­tre. And as part of that process, Le Reve the dream, as you would say in French, Le Reve, we de­cid­ed that we would cre­ate a space with­in the C3 Cen­tre where peo­ple could make their dreams a re­al­i­ty. And as our tagline says, ex­pe­ri­ence the dream.”

It is one of sev­er­al changes that the shop­ping cen­tre has un­der­gone re­cent­ly as the team re­cent­ly com­mis­sioned lo­cal graph­ic artist Nicholas Hug­gins to cre­ate a mur­al in the court­yard area, which had de­pic­tions of the var­i­ous pop­u­lar im­ages as­so­ci­at­ed with Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the JTA team said it had recog­nised the rise of food parks and the emer­gence of plazas around the coun­try and opt­ed to cre­ate their own, called ‘The Eatery at C3.”

Clarke said, “We are cater­ing for the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al street food palettes. So cus­tomers could come and ba­si­cal­ly taste food and cui­sine from well-known lo­cal food mar­keters.”

The C3 team is al­so plan­ning to bring more at­trac­tions in­clud­ing open­ing a bowl­ing al­ley to south Trinidad, mere months af­ter bowl­ing of­fi­cial­ly re­turned to the coun­try via The Al­ley at East Gates in Trinci­ty.

“We al­so have an eight-lane in­ter­na­tion­al bowl­ing al­ley com­ing, which is the pres­tige lanes. They will be open­ing soon, and they will bring bowl­ing back to South along with cater­ing. They al­so have pool ta­bles, minia­ture golf, ar­cades, and restau­rants. So that will al­so at­tract that fam­i­ly unit to en­joy each oth­er’s com­pa­ny whilst hav­ing fun, play­ing var­i­ous games,” said Hilton-Clarke, adding, “And then down­stairs in the court­yard as well, we’ll al­so have prob­a­bly the biggest in­door play park in South which will cater for the younger kids, from three or four years old all the way up to eight, nine, ten and 11.”

The fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed mod­el has proven a suc­cess not just at C3 but at oth­er fa­cil­i­ties, but JTA be­lieves the va­ri­ety of op­tions has even helped its clients in a pe­ri­od where re­tail shop­ping has tak­en a hit.

Nine years on, the JTA team is hope­ful it can re­main as the lo­ca­tion most think of when opt­ing for a day out in South.