A Retail Destination with Community at its Heart

a Retail Destination with Community at its Heart

Community centered experiences have become the focus for Times Square Center. Located in the heart of Dubai on one of the main arteries, Sheikh Zayed Road, into downtown, the mall strives to bring the local community together providing an experiential centre which, at its heart, celebrates the local community.

Times Square Center caters for a variety of customers from tech-savvy shoppers to pop-culture aficionado’s, health-conscious mums to active families, and fitness enthusiasts to adrenaline junkies. The mall’s offering includes its anchor stores; One of Sharaf DG’s biggest grossing stores in the UAE, Toys R Us, BiOrganic and Adventure HQ with a climbing wall, that has become a landmark for the mall, to family events and pop-up markets that bring the local community together. Market’s such as The Ripe Market, ArtE and Baby Bazaar are often packed on the weekends and gives customers the opportunity to engage with and buy from local producers. “At Times Square Center, we are not afraid to be different,” says General Manager, Nancy Ozbek. “With a plethora of malls in the UAE, competition is fierce, so it’s important to identify one’s own USP and build on this.” With community and sustainability at the top of their agenda, Times Square Center explains how they have implemented these pillars into the Mall’s ethos, “Looking after our community and environment is incredibly important, and we have put a big emphasis on promoting sustainability and providing an eco-friendly environment through a variety of events and initiatives” said Ozbek. “Last Ramadan we created an initiative whereby visitors could exchange their plastic bottles in return for a reusable

bottle. A simple, but effective activation, which resulted in collecting over 12,000 bottles and handing out over 3,000 reuseable bottles. The collected bottles were put to good use, as we have handed them to DGrade, a company that specialises in converting plastics into the fabric” she added. “Reduce, recycle and reuse is a constant mantra that I drive home to my team.” Times Square Center has taken recycling to the next level, by collecting all the food waste generated by their F&B outlets and producing their own compost, which will, in the near future, be used for their indoor organic garden, an exciting new development that Ozbek is spearheading. The ethos stretches to the back of the house, where plastic water bottles have been banned from

the management offices and replaced with filtered tap water, another initiative which will shortly be rolled out across the mall. Taking care of its community is at the heart of Times Square Center, starting with their youngest audience – babies and children. Home to Malak, which provides pre and post-natal care, Mums and Bumps, which offers the Middle East’s biggest selection of maternity wear and B-Safe, the child safety specialists, the mall caters to the need of expecting and new mothers. One of the mall’s homegrown success stories is Eggs & Soldiers. What began as a small 473 sq ft store specialising in organic baby products has now due to phenomenal demand expanded to almost 4,000 sq ft store due to increased demand from their customers.

The variety of classes on offer at Times Square Center provides the community with all the leisure activities they could wish for. “Our customers can choose from a plethora of fitness classes with Orange Theory, Dance and Music classes with the newly launched Melodica, and coming soon we will be introducing Yoga & Pilates classes, Design Technology classes as well as photography classes,” said Ozbek. In addition, to the fitness offering, there’s an emphasis on building a community of like-minded individuals with common interests. Back to Games is home to the biggest board games store in the UAE, and provides an open door policy whereby visitors can come and play, free of charge, purely to encourage community interaction. Another store that attracts the pop-culture community is the newly opened Otaku ME, where customers actively partake in mini car racing championships and plastic model building events. “We are really seeing a resurgence in traditional board games and model making with our stores at Times Square Center. They bring in the pop-culture community, and it’s refreshing to see groups interacting without an iPhone or iPad insight” added Ozbek.

About TIMES SQUARE CENTER Times Square Center is centrally located on Sheikh Zayed Road. A uniquely compact community shopping destination, which offers an original selection of well-known and respected international and boutique brands as well as a selection of exclusive brands that will not be found anywhere else in Dubai. Time Square Center offers a well-rounded, intimate, social family encounter, with a broadspectrum range of shop personalities, complimented with weekly artisan markets. We are committed to our local community and provide a warm welcome with familiar neighbourly qualities. www.timessquarecenter.ae

Nancy Ozbek is a career retail industry professional with more than 20 years of experience. Prior to joining the dynamic team at Times Square Center as the General Manager, Nancy held several leadership positions across various renowned malls and community centers in the UAE. Nancy commenced her retail journey as the Leasing Manager of Al Hanaa Centre and after six years of moved to Al Ghurair Centre as the Senior Leasing Manager. She has then held progressively more senior leadership roles in the retail sector, including Senior Head of Leasing in Nakheel’s Ibn Battuta Mall, Head of Leasing at Deerfields Townsquare Center in Abu Dhabi and General Manager of The Mall, Jumeirah Dubai.