The Temple town is a shopping paradise. People from the southern districts of Tamil Nadu throng the city to shop. The markets of the Masi streets are a regular haunt for the earthy ‘ Sandhai’ type shopping. Locals say it was in the early 1990’s that the town was introduced to fashion shopping. It happened with the launch of a few shopping plazas that soon became the hotspots of those times.
Located at vantage points, the plazas went up to three or four levels with a fancy façade in the front and housed multiple shops selling everything a shopaholic would want under a roof.
The Marwari, Gujarati, Memon and the Chettiar traders were the first to invest in these plazas. “What distinguished a shopping plaza from a shopping complex was the variety and quality,” says Mahesh Chhabria, a businessman. He recalls spending weekends at the Zulaika and Lucky plazas, near Central and Chinthamani cinemas. “They denote the lifestyle in the past.”
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The city’s elite spent their evenings at the plazas, either relishing the newly-found Chaat flavours, biting into ice creams or trying out denim jackets that were a novelty in Madurai then. “One would see many Contessas and Padminis parked along these plazas on Saturdays. Mostly doctors and engineers would buy clothes from here,” says Suruli Vel, the manager of Lehero Arcade. It was built in 1994 by Trilok Chand, another Rajasthani businessman as four-storeyed with 60 shops inside. “The strategic position of the plaza opposite the American college served the purpose. We got the entire college crowd.”
Likewise, Golcha Complex is a landmark. Even the public bus stop is named after it. “Those days Anna Nagar was considered outskirts of the city and people were reluctant to do business here,” recalls Jitendra Golcha. His father, Malchand Golcha, migrated to Madurai in the early 60’s from Rajasthan and is credited with setting up the city’s first shopping plaza in 1986. “My father used to say if a housewife steps into our complex, she should be able to find everything from grocery to bakery. It was like a mini-mall”, says Jitendra. He remembers how the first Chaat corner ‘Chit Chat’ that opened at Golcha complex became a favourite hangout for the collegians and a shop selling music and video CDs did brisk business. The plaza has now changed hands and is called the ‘City centre’, spread over two floors and 32 shops.
Rajam and SACS Plazas in Tallakulam, Sangeeth in Goripalayam and AR plaza in Simmakal came up later. Architect Y.R. Ramanath, who designed most of these buildings modelled them after some famous ones in Bombay and Delhi. “The facade of the Golcha complex was designed in a way so that all the shops could be seen from the road. It had a fountain in the centre with circular corridors and became a major attraction for shoppers,” says Ramanath. “Zulaika Plaza was exclusively designed to hold small shops meant for selling imported knick-knacks by the Muslim traders,” he says. It however, had a unique feature, a double cellar underground parking facility. The AR Plaza, built by a Chettiar too got a bus stop named after it.
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Most of these plazas offered uber cool shopping experience. With the advent of malls, large multi-brand retail format stores and now online shopping portals, the once shopping paradises have slipped into oblivion. They just stand as pretty buildings reminding of the past when access to fashion was limited in small towns. Ramesh, Manager at the SACS plaza, says, “Lot of brands invariably had their outlets in these plazas and if one shut, another opened. The footfall, he says, has come down drastically and many shops have turned into office spaces and godowns. Inside most plazas today, one finds small clinics, travel bureaus, insurance companies, browsing, spoken-English and computer centres.
Mumbai-based Visual Merchandiser and Retail-space designer Chandan Kumar feels that the concept of shopping plazas are still alive in small towns compared to the metros where even malls are shutting down. “Shopping is increasingly becoming instant. Online shopping is what most people do. Nowadays, retail therapy only means window-shopping and hanging out. The art of actual store-hopping may soon become a thing of the past.”