Dubai Mall Commercial Strategy
Middle East & Africa
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Al Balad, Commercial Strategy
- Client
- INTU Properties PLC
- Services
- Commercial Strategy
- Sector
- Retail
- Location
- Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
- Size
- 24,147m²
A retail strategy for one of Saudi Arabia’s five UNESCO sites
Al-Balad is the 500-year-old historic core of Jeddah and one of Saudi Arabia’s five UNESCO World Heritage Sites, designated in 2014.
The 2.5km2 district is among Saudi Vision 2030’s headline regeneration programmes, with over 600 historic buildings, 36 mosques and five historic markets brought together under a masterplan led by Allies and Morrison. Benoy was appointed to develop the retail deployment strategy.
Working within an active masterplan
Restoration was already underway across the district when Benoy began work, and the commercial fabric being studied was changing alongside it. Site mapping, building condition assessment and retail surveying were carried out against an emerging masterplan and a 500-year-old urban grain of coral-stone houses, narrow lanes, souqs and barahas. The strategy was grounded in primary site analysis rather than imported from elsewhere.
Heritage as the commercial logic
Al-Balad cannot be underwritten as a conventional retail destination. The tenant strategy, deployment plan and placemaking tactics work with the existing fabric, the historic markets, the routes between heritage houses, the climate of the Hejaz. Heritage is the proposition.
A regeneration scaled to its setting
The wider district is targeting 770,000m2 of office and retail floorspace, 3,000-plus hotel rooms and 20 million visitors a year by 2035. The retail strategy is designed to support that scale of demand without diluting what makes the district worth visiting.
