SM City Marikina ni Youkoso!

"The future of shopping begins now...", so the poster says.

To find out if shopping really has a good future in this one, I personally visited SM City Marikina, the latest addition to the SM mall empire with n malls as of late (where the value of n seems to become a very large natural number :p).

The mall officially opened last September 5, but I got to take a look at the next day, September 6. And, whoa, there were so may people inside! Well, it was not just because of the Filipinos' innate curiosity for something new (especially that it IS an SM Mall, heck), but at that time there was a mall show for the movie I.T.A.L.Y. by GMA Films (huh? meron palang pelikulang ganu'n? :O) and they expected to see Jolly Jolina and Emperador, err, Mr. Generoso Dennis Trillo among other not-so-known wards of GMA Artist Center (Go Star Circle XD).

Ehem. Anyway, I got to explore each floor, including a look a peek of the Department Store, the Supermarket, and the spacious Cyberzone, and I got to take some pictures of the interior of the mall (see the album of my photos in my Multiply Site). And surprisingly, SM did not go for a soft opening since almost ALL shops were already open. I then remembered when SM Bacoor opened and only the Department Store and Supermarket were opened then.

Now, what can I say about the mall? Interior-wise, it's okay, with good lighting and interior designs, although there are some dim parts. I liked the spacious entrance lobby the most as well as the glass part of the facade. The Supermarket is also spacious and well-lit, as exprected from a newly-opened supermarket. I still need to explore the Cinemas (with good exterior designs, by the way).

There are some downsides, though, about the mall. One, it's a small mall (pardon the intended onomatopoeia there). For a mall which spang somewhere-out-there near the Marikina River, one can't expect a grandoise mall like SM North or something. Also, you can't go around it since the there is only one aisle per floor - with four floors in all - so you can only go back and fourth (an exception is the Cyberzone which is on the left side of the mall and perpendicular to the first floor aisle). Also, the Food Court was unusually placed on the fourth floor - on ONE SIDE of the mall - and you can only see SIX food stalls in the Food Court! Another thing is that there was NO taxi stand! You need to hail a taxi outside the mall with those waiting for jeepneys. I remmbered horridly when my girlfirend and I went nuts after waiting for hours for a taxi with dozens of other people when we shopped there for groceries last September 8 and was caught in the thunderstorm inside the mall. And finally, as expected, it always create a traffic bottleneck between Katipunan and the Santolan LRT station.

Well, relatively SM City Marikina is fairly good as a small a compared to some. Many of the drawbacks can be improved upon in the days to come so I can still give the mall a chance to see those improvements in the future. At least there is a mall nearer my rented place here in Santolan and I don't need to go Cubao, Megamall, Sta. Lucia, or Robinsons East to buy something.

Has the future of shopping really begun in Marikina? Let's see in the coming months.

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