CONCERNED that too few businesses had signed up to participate in the local version of Fashion’s Night Out, the board of management of Portmore Shopping Centre Limited Tuesday called its tenants to a meeting to shore up the numbers for the Observer’s celebration of the premier retail shopping event.

Prior to Tuesday, the mall accounted for fewer than 30 of the 56 FNO participating stores throughout the municipality.

But, according to the board, and Portmore Mayor Keith Hinds, it is a poor showing given that there are 104 shops in the 140,000 square-foot mall.

“We have the single largest mall in the Caribbean, which means we have the largest block of customers and what do you have to show for it?” Hinds asked the business owners as he displayed a list of registered participants.

“This is not good enough,” he said.

The mayor, himself a business owner, reminded the mall tenants that customer-friendly events such as FNO are excellent ways to jump-start slow business and to dispel the long-held belief that the municipality is nothing more than a dormitory community for the Corporate Area’s working class.

“Business people, I’m begging you. It’s very important that we change the concept (of Portmore being a dormitory community). We really need to get on board with this thing,” said Hinds. “People should be coming from (Kingston) to spend their money here instead of the other way around.”

He also urged owners to be more economically prudent by living within the means the business provides, and to improve their services to the public.

“Not everybody coming into your store wants to hear ‘suss’. They need professionalism, they need to be treated with respect,” said Hinds, who also pointed to the physical condition of the shopping complex.

“This mall needs to be resuscitated,” he said, making references to the cinema which closed down a few years ago, and to the amphitheatre which is underused.

If the mall is in a bad shape, rebutted board member Winston Bryan, it’s not for lack of good management.

“The mall is not mashed up. One of the problems we are having is non-compliance with maintenance fees. We are stifled. We are constrained with costs for security, water and light for the common areas,” he said.

Board chairman Norman Walker concurred: “We are struggling to keep up with the services”.

They say the compliance, of which “there has been significant fall off” in the last two years, is close to 50 per cent.

Maintenance fees go towards utilities, and sanitation and security services, but with a handful of stores carrying the weight of others, the board says it’s a virtual “hand-to-mouth” situation.

Security accounts for the biggest chunk of its budget, coming in at $1.2 million per month. The monthly common-area water cost is $700,000; light is $340,000; janitorial services cost $300,000 and sanitation comes in at $220,000.

“We are going to be showcasing the mall this weekend and we would have loved to have got a paint job and give the mall a facelift,” Walker said.

“We, as operators, have a lot of work to do. We’re nowhere near saturating the market. We can start that on September 10,” he said.

Director in charge of promotions on the board, Mavis Beckford, urged the business owners to give “genuine discounts” and dissuaded them from marking up prices and marking them down to reflect the original selling price.