Forum Bornova marks 20 years with 130 stores, is an open-air mall right for your shop?

No. The report says the 20th year completes on 12 October 2026, so 2006 is an inference, not a published opening date. If you plan to put that year in a leasing pitch or a board memo, ask the center’s management to confirm it in writing.

That claim comes from Polat, and there is no independent confirmation. According to Polat, some brands came to the region for the first time here, and some rolled out their newest store concept in Türkiye here first. No brand names are given, so read it as a signal of direction, not a ranking.

ECE’s corporate site lists Commerz Real as the investor and Polat as center manager. ECE works with around 200 shopping centers and around 17,000 tenant partners, and Forum Bornova sits in that portfolio.

A shopper walking on one level does not disappear up an escalator. Your window stays open to everyone passing, a bit like a high street. The dead upper-floor corner where stock just sits on the shelf is less of a problem in a single-storey plan.

Events bring crowds, and crowds do not always bring baskets. A family watching a concert sits down at a café and may never step into a fashion store. Impulse categories such as food and drink, toys and cosmetics take a more direct share from events.

Yes, and you should price it in. İzmir’s sun is not written into the lease, but it is written into the sales report, and so is a rainy weekend. Ask management for footfall by month and look at the winter months separately.

Open walkways and event space naturally feed food and drink. Cafés, restaurants, children’s play areas and family stores could move to more visible spots as the center renews. For this group, sales per square meter tie directly to the events calendar.

During a renovation, hoardings, rerouted walkways and temporary closures can cost real money. The customer turns around at the door, and winning that same customer back takes months. If your lease has no clause on rent relief or relocation during works, now is the time to raise it.

High-street shops and neighborhood cafés around Bornova, the İzmir district the center is named after. A renewed center can pull nearby foot traffic toward itself. When a nearby magnet gets stronger, the local shopping route shifts.

The 28,154 on ECE’s page is a daily average for January to December 2025. Do not multiply it into an annual total for your pitch deck. What you really need is the hourly flow in the walkway where your store would sit.

The 2025 AVM Index from AYD, Türkiye’s shopping centers and retailers association, and research firm Akademetre counts 445 malls in Türkiye with 2025 sales of about $59 billion. In the same index, sales per square meter rose 30% while visitor numbers fell 3%; per-square-meter growth was 35.3% in Anatolia and 25% in Istanbul. Fewer people come, but those who come spend more. Average basket size now matters more than the crowd.

The store next to you either brings your customer or takes them away. Here’s what I have noticed: a complementary neighbor is usually worth more than a competing one. If brands in your walkway sell different products to your customer, baskets grow; if three stores sell the same product, a price war starts.

Yes, and you should. Open a three-column table for each candidate center: reason to visit, neighboring tenants and digital footprint. Score each from one to five. Score a second center the same way and the decision moves from gut feeling to comparison, and you stop arguing with yourself in the car park.

Visitors who come for an event often check on their phone what else is in the center. Your store’s map listing needs the right address, opening hours, photos and the center’s name.

If you know the concert or children’s event week in advance, you can stack your social media and local ad budget on that day. Prepare an in-store offer for that day, not just a repost.

Read a store-specific promo code, direction requests from your map listing and visits to your store page together. If sales are flat, these three signals help you see whether the cause is footfall, the window or the price. On our retail page, where we interpret the retail agenda for you, you will find similar measurement examples.

Spend an hour there on a weekday afternoon and another on a Saturday evening. In the walkway you have in mind, count how many people stop and how many leave carrying bags. The bag count is more honest than the crowd.

Ask for monthly and walkway-level footfall, the tenant mix plan, the events calendar and the parts of the refresh plan that will affect tenants. On rent and lease terms, verify with the official source and your own adviser; this is not legal or financial advice.

Fill the same scoring table for an enclosed mall and put the results side by side. Read our piece on what 160 years of shopping malls say about location versus scale as well. To see how retailers use social responsibility programs, look at Watsons and L’Oréal meeting women producers in Kuşadası.

Before opening day, your map listing, local ads and an events-linked content plan should be ready; we do this work through our digital marketing services. You can check the center’s official profile on ECE’s Forum Bornova page. My decision line is this: if the center gives people a reason to visit and you can measure your store, the open-air model deserves first place on your list.

According to ECE’s corporate site, the center averaged 28,154 visitors a day from January to December 2025. No annual total or year-on-year change is published.

That has not been announced. According to Polat, a renovation and concept refresh is planned for 2026–2027, but scope, budget and timeline have not been shared. If you are a tenant, discuss the works clauses in your lease with center management.

No seasonal sales data is published for this center. Before you decide, ask management for footfall by month and assess the winter months separately.