However, success did not come straight away. For example, the management says, it was not easy initially getting tenants and the Centre only filled up after 18 months of operations. But since the Centre took off in between 1985 and 1986, says Centre Manager Nitin Shah, there has been no looking back. Mr Shah says some of the original tenants, such as Hotpoint Appliances which now has a presence throughout the East Africa region, were indeed small businesses and start-ups.
In the planning days of the 1970s it targeted some 25,000 households. Its current catchments encompass nearly 100,000 households. It has 260,000 square feet of fully-serviced leased space out of a total built up area of 500,000 square feet on six levels. Its third – and not necessarily final – phase of development is about to begin. The Sarit Centre was founded by two families who originally carried out business in Karatina and Murang’a towns of Central Province beginning the pre Independence days.
The families of Vidhu Ramji Shah of Murang’a and Jadavji Ratanji Rughani of Karatina moved to Nairobi in 1964. It is they who came up with the concept and, more importantly, saw it through the planning and execution. Their first business in Nairobi was the well known Text Book Centre. The families had run bookshops or sold books in their shops in Karatina and Nyeri. Text Book Centre soon established itself and remains to this day the most successful supplier of educational books in Kenya.
Little wonder that to this day TBC remains a major retail outlet at The Sarit Centre. TBC, the most comprehensive and best stocked book outlet in Africa, and Uchumi Supermarket, the anchor store of the Centre, however, compete with such famed names as Woolworths, Truworths, Bata, Hotpoint Appliances, Anicare, Audio Point, some five banks and 12 Automated Teller Machines (ATMs). The medical services have not been left out. Fifteen of them, led by AAR (African Air Rescue) occupy two floors.