The management of the Waterfront Karen shopping mall has dismissed media reports indicating that the mall is up for sale.
In a statement, Dr. David Muguku, the Waterfront Karen Managing Director dismissed the reports, saying the shopping mall was a long-term investment.
‘’The Waterfront Karen Shopping Mall and its surrounding property remains to be a long-term investment whose main objective is to provide a conducive, safe, environmentally-friendly and world-class shopping & lifestyle experience for the public’’, reads the statement in part.
Reports had earlier indicated that the family of the late businessman Nelson Muguku was selling the mall at Ksh.20 billion together with the 50 acres it is sitting on.
‘‘We would like to dispel this information and let the public, our tenants and clients know that the information is false and does not represent the position of the management’’.
‘’We would like to further inform the public that any information pertaining to the sale of the property, if any, or any other matter would be issued by the management through official channels’’, added Dr. Muguku.
The property is one of the biggest investments the family has made after divesting from the patriarch’s founding stake in Equity Group.
The heirs sold shares worth more than Ksh. 4 billion following the listing of the bank on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) in August 2006, a move that saw them drop out of the list of the lender’s top investors, according to a report by Business Daily.
The alleged plan to sell the Karen land and the shopping complex comes after the mall suffered from the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and the exit of its anchor tenant, Shoprite, a South African retail chain.
The family’s investment vehicles, Crossroads Limited and Karen Waterfront Phase Two Limited signed a lease agreement with Shoprite on November 26, 2019, a move that saw the retailer take up space at the mall’s ground floor as the anchor tenant.
In mid-October 2020, Naivas Supermarkets took up space as the Waterfront Karen’s anchor tenant following Shoprite’s exit.
