Five mandates, five different problems.

Building a destination on a heritage site

Al Dhaid sits inland in Sharjah’s central region, historically a caravan rest station and supply point on the route across the peninsula. It had a fort and a wildlife museum, and no modern retail.

Scope covered leasing, positioning and tenant mix across 34 units on a 3,186 sqm ground floor. The mix was built in three layers: food and beverage to hold dwell time, local and heritage producers selling home-made goods to give the souq a reason to exist in Al Dhaid specifically, and international names, Starbucks among them, to draw trade from outside the town.

Supporting infrastructure includes 595 parking bays, a 450-metre camel track for races and beauty contests, and an arcade over the Falaj Al Dhaid watercourse.

• Leasing strategy and tenant recruitment across 34 units
• Positioning and three-layer category mix
• Heritage producers integrated alongside international fascias

A regional mall through expansion, then a pandemic

Manar Mall was being expanded and upgraded, taking the centre past 120 stores and more than 30 food and beverage outlets. The leasing brief was to fill that new space with names the emirate did not already have.

The headline letting was Ras Al Khaimah’s first Zara, at over 27,500 sq ft, announced in December 2019 with the chairman of Al Hamra present at the signing. Dior, Paul, Adidas, Under Armour and The North Face followed. iSTYLE opened in February 2022 as the operator’s largest store in the UAE.

Then Covid. The work became holding the asset together and rebuilding it: renewing and re-gearing the anchor and major-line tenancies, including H&M, Carrefour, Sephora and Sun & Sand Sports, and bringing in dine-in food and beverage to replace the footfall drivers the mall had lost.

• New-brand recruitment through the expansion
• Anchor and major-line renewals and re-gears
• Food and beverage repositioning through recovery

Due diligence through a disposal

Al Hamra Mall runs to 27,000 sqm over ground and first floor. Through the asset’s divestment the work sat on the due diligence team, assembling and defending the leasing position a buyer would test: tenancy schedule, income quality, expiry profile and the assumptions behind them.

Alongside that, co-authored the turnaround strategy presented with the asset, setting out what the centre could become under new ownership rather than what it had been.

• Leasing and income due diligence through sale
• Tenancy schedule and expiry profile analysis
• Turnaround strategy authored alongside the disposal

Retail strategy for an expanding airport

Ras Al Khaimah International Airport passed half a million passengers in 2021 for the first time in its then 45-year history, and entered a phased terminal expansion on the back of it.

Airport retail answers to different rules than a shopping centre: a captive but time-poor catchment, dwell measured in minutes, and concession economics rather than base rent. The work covered the commercial strategy for the expanded terminal, sizing the offer to the passenger profile the airport was actually going to get rather than the one it hoped for.

• Retail and food and beverage strategy for the expansion
• Offer sized to passenger profile and dwell time
• Concession structure rather than conventional base rent

Re-letting an institutional asset

Not every anchor is a retailer. RAK Academy sits within the Government of Ras Al Khaimah’s investment portfolio, and the brief was to renegotiate its lease with Wellspring School, the American-curriculum operator run by WellSpring Educational Consultancy.

A school lease turns on covenant strength, term and the cost of reinstatement rather than footfall or turnover rent. The work was structuring terms that held for a government landlord over a long horizon while remaining workable for an operator growing a year group at a time.

• Lease renegotiation acting for the landlord side
• Covenant, term and reinstatement structuring
• Institutional tenancy on a government-held asset