Footsteps Mega Store opens doors

– five-star restaurant, rooftop dining expected soon

The multimillion-dollar United Centre Footsteps Mega Store at Camp and Regent streets, Georgetown will be opening its doors today (Thursday) to shoppers. The six- storey, 58,300 square foot building is being called the first contemporary shopping centre in Guyana.

“We think that the United Centre is the first contemporary shopping centre in Guyana. We have amalgamated our stores, our Essential Shopping Centre stores, Footsteps, and our Home and Beyond stores and we have brought them together into one single environment which we call Footsteps Mega Store,” Marketing Manager Michael Alleyne said.
“We have four floors of shopping. We also included the United Centre Pharmacy, Western Union facilities; we have a café called Upper Crust and we have the franchise Chester Fries on our first floor. So, we have tried to let the customer have a unique experience, a complete experience when they are shopping with us,” he added.
Alleyne said the construction of the building took about four years, and the major hurdle was familiarising the local contractors with the imported building materials. “We have used wonder board and our local builders weren’t very familiar with it, so it takes time for them to get to know how to use it properly, how to structure it in the way we would like to achieve, so it took some time and we believe in using locals rather than bring someone in,” he said.
He added that had the company used local materials, it would not have gotten the desired finish. “Locally, we used INFAB for the steel structure, but what we would like to achieve it wasn’t possible with the local materials. For example the aluminium board we have on the exterior of the building makes it a whole lot lighter, as well as the glass so it is less stress on our foundation,” he explained.
Pull factor
The marketing manager said the store’s décor is one of the “major pull factors”. “The way that we have designed the store – what Ms (Sabita) Narine had envisioned – is that of having a contemporary and modern shopping experience.
She’s Guyanese and she doesn’t like the fact that you have to travel, to go elsewhere to have this kind of experience, so she decided that we should have the same experience, we should have access to the same items, we should have access to the same kinds of service,” he said.
“Our roof should be completed in the next two months and when that is completed, it will boast a five-star restaurant; it will have three bars, two dining decks, and a viewing area,” he revealed.
He said the company is not keen on making a profit at this point, and is all about providing the customers with the experience of shopping overseas. He added that customers need not to worry while shopping because they have placed much emphasis on security. “If you notice some of the items downstairs are tagged, so you may know that in some other countries if you tend to shoplift, an alarm will go off; we have added that to our items downstairs and we want to have a complete experience and unfortunately that happens, so we have to be prepared for it,” he said. “… we have also brought in additional items, so the items you have to know and love we have them here, and we have gotten additional items. Before we never brought appliances, we now have appliances like refrigerators, stoves, televisions… We wanted that real-world experience at United Centre,” he added.