For people living in Salt Lake and Manicktala region, this mall offers an alternative solution to City Center which is crowded beyond capacity now a days. This Mall on E M Bypass besides Apollo Hospital is again a match box type mall. But unlike other match box malls in the city, this mall has a small open area where people can sit and while away their time. It tries to combine the swanky look of South City Mall with the open spaces of City Center.
One would wonder what prompted the promoters to open the mall at such an offbeat area. Most of the malls in the city have a posh catchment area. The catchment area of the mall covers maximum slums. Yet with such a catchment area the promoters built such a swanky mall. The approach road to this mall is yet a nightmare on weekends. The road is narrow and its made narrower by cars which are parked on the road. The mall security guards thankfully do a good job in managing the traffic. I think the problems are more to do with the work going on EM Bypass rather than mismanagement of the mall guards.
But once inside its a different story. The best thing I find about this mall is the parking. Being a new driver, City center always posed a huge challenge for parking. The mall has 5 floors of parking plus two levels of underground parking. Its this easy parking that has made me a fan of this mall.
Barring the high end Rolexs, Tissots, Rados and Tag Heurs, the brands available in the mall are all Indian. But the shops are more spacious than City Center. You should visit stores of the likes of Color Plus, Raymonds and Blackberry to get that International feeling. The food court is good but the mall lacks good restarurants. Machan, Haka(it serves only buffet) and Five Rivers are nothing to write about. There is Spencer Hyper Mall which is smaller than the one in South City but its still bigger than C3 in city center. If you love ice cream and cookies then this mall has over 4-5 brands to offer you. You would even find Costa Coffee. The anchor tenant is Westside and you would find big bazaar and ezone here.
The mall has the only IMAX in Kolkata.Along with IMAX there are 3 other screens. Both IMAX and one of the screens have executive class seats. These are 150 degree recliners and the best thing is the price. At 200 bucks you can get these seats. This is much cheaper than South City which charges above 350 bucks. But here the price of the tickets doesnt include food.
Number of visitors to this mall have been steadily rising. Till six months back the mall had very few visitors and you could enjoy the empty mall. Shops here are usuall empty even during sale period on weekends. Due to less crowd its actually a pleasure shopping here.
To sum it up the mall is definitely worth a visit for people living in Salt Lake and Manicktala region and for those who hate standing in a queue for shopping.