A contract for a new mega shopping mall in Abu Dhabi worth AED120 million ($32.6 million) has been awarded ahead of its opening. The interior fit-out contractor for Reem Mall, a $1.2 billion shopping project in the UAE capital, has been called JC Maclean International.

As the world's first fully enabled, offline-to-online, technology-powered life and business center, Reem Mall is being built by Al Farwaniya Property Developments and aims to transform the shopping experience.

The three-story project houses 450 local and international brands, including multinational food and beverage outlets, a dedicated food court, and one of the region's largest hypermarkets. It will also feature family-friendly entertainment and edutainment, including Snow Abu Dhabi, the world's first indoor snow park. The mall's gross built-up area is 600,000 sqm.

"We are very proud to take part in this award-winning retail project and join hands with groups of highly skilled professionals and experts in achieving the project’s completion to the utmost satisfaction of all stakeholders," said Saeed Daraghma, JC Maclean International's newly named CEO. Since its inception in 1997, JC Maclean International has worked on a variety of ventures in the UAE and abroad.

In addition to the physical mall, a mega Omni-channel ecosystem, linked to an integrated e-commerce logistics hub and an aggregated customer app, will be built.

Customers should go to the mall and visit the different shops like they usually do. Instead of making several orders and lugging shopping bags around, they can order from the app, and the product will be shipped to a digital locker as part of a newly built logistics center. It can then be collected after the visit.

“At the heart of the program it is a single notion that a shopping mall needs to turn from the conventional mall to an integrated body, linking the customer with the retailer,” Milat Sayra Berirmen, digital innovation director for Reem Mall, told Arabian Business last year. Outside the mall, it's the twenty-first century; inside the mall, it's the twentieth.

“Unlike the rest of the players in the country,  I can confidently say that Reem Mall is not just a real estate investment; it is a technology investment, a logistics investment, and a real estate investment,” Berirmen said.