October 29 2026 15:40
KAGISO, SOUTH AFRICA
JSE-listed Exemplar REITail opened Leratong City Mall in Kagiso, Mogale City, today, launching the first phase of the R5bn Leratong Smart City development on Gauteng’s West Rand.
The 34 000m² regional shopping centre is the second-largest mall in Exemplar’s portfolio and one of the biggest retail developments to open in a South African township this year. It was developed by McCormick Property Development (MPD), Exemplar’s long-standing development partner, and designed by MDS Architecture.
Exemplar is led by CEO Jason McCormick. His father, John, founded MPD in 1983.
Leratong City Mall serves three communities, Kagiso, Tshepisong and Azaadville, but its reach is far wider. It sits at the R41/R558 crossroads, directly opposite Leratong Hospital, on routes that link Mogale City with Soweto, Randfontein, Merafong, Roodepoort, Florida and Johannesburg. The developers have even started calling the area North West Soweto.
It is also a green building story for Exemplar and township retail. Leratong City Mall has received preliminary EDGE Advanced certification, the higher tier of the International Finance Corporation’s green building standard, and Nedbank CIB Property Finance has financed the development.
The opening marks the end of an impressive 17-month build. Construction started in June 2025, shortly after a sod-turning ceremony on June 5 2025.
“We have delivered on time and on budget once again and are excited about how Leratong can enhance so many communities,” Jason McCormick said.
A smart city that starts with a mall
Leratong City is a public-private partnership between the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements, Mogale City Local Municipality and Trendville, with MPD as the developer.
The mall is the commercial anchor of a 350ha node that is planned to include about 15 000 housing units, a private hospital, schools, early childhood development centres, parks, transport facilities, government service offices and a commercial precinct. The rest of the node is expected to be rolled out over the next 10 to 15 years.
The project traces its roots to the Township Regeneration Strategy of the early 2010s, and the wider development takes its cue from President Cyril Ramaphosa’s 2019 call for new smart cities. Planning has been under way for more than a decade and finally the developments have begun.
Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi, Human Settlements MEC Tasneem Motara, Mogale City Executive Mayor Lucky Sele and Trendville managing director John McCormick unveiled the project last June.
The municipality laid some of the groundwork early. In 2024 it completed a five-million-litre reservoir in Kagiso Extension 13, next to the mall site, to secure water supply for the wider smart city.
Large housing projects in South Africa have often delivered homes first, with shops, services and jobs following years later, if at all. But Leratong, the commercial anchor comes first. That gives the node an employer, a reason for people to visit and a source of rates income before the first new houses go up.
Leratong City Mall is a single-level centre with 89 retail tenants, and its tenant line-up reads like a who’s who of South African retail.
It has three supermarket anchors, Shoprite, Boxer and Pick n Pay. Two butchers, Roots and OBC as are both of the country’s big pharmacy groups, Clicks and Dis-Chem.
There are nine banks and financial services providers, more than 60 fashion stores, and fast-food brands including KFC.
For Kagiso residents, that means the weekly grocery shop, a pharmacy visit, a trip to the bank and new school shoes can all be done in one place, without a taxi ride to Krugersdorp, Roodepoort or Soweto. Taxi facilities form part of the development.
McCormick says Leratong City also stands out because it offers family entertainment and facilities, including a 1 000-seat amphitheatre.
The tiered outdoor space has a digital screen and is designed for concerts, markets, community gatherings and live sport. It ties directly into the mall’s main walkways and its food court.
The food court overlooks the amphitheatre, and large sliding glass panels open completely so that diners can move between inside and outside. There are 11 restaurants in the food court, two children’s play areas inside and three more sit-down restaurants outside, along with a 300m² outdoor play zone for children.
The first event at Leratong City Mall is the All White Soul Session this Saturday, October 31.
Upwardly mobile township shoppers want to see and be seen, and that Levels was designed to give them a place to do exactly that. McCormick says.
It is a sharp read of how malls in these markets work. A township mall is often the main social space in the area, not just a place to shop, and a centre that hosts events gives people reasons to visit beyond the monthly grocery run.
Built on the West Rand’s mining heritage
MDS Architecture, which also designed the R650m GrandWest Mall now under construction in Cape Town, has drawn on the West Rand’s gold mining history.
The main entrances are marked by angular steel canopies modelled on mine headgear. They extend well beyond the building and are visible from the surrounding roads, acting as both landmarks and weather protection.
“We wanted the entrances to feel like invitations,” said Louis Pretorius, partner at MDS Architecture in a recent interview.
Inside, the main walkway has a geometric ceiling that resembles an open-cast mine, broken up by skylights that bring in natural light. The interior palette uses neutral tones drawn from the colours of the rock excavated on site, together with crisp whites, so that tenants’ shopfronts provide the colour.
The amphitheatre is surrounded by indigenous landscaping that needs little irrigation and helps cool the space naturally.
The professional team included quantity surveyor Quanticost, civil engineer Civilconcept, structural engineer Struxit, Ingplan as electrical, mechanical and fire engineer, and Watsol as wet services engineer. Mike Buyskes was the main contractor.
EDGE Advanced certification
Leratong City Mall’s green credentials are one of the most interesting parts of the story.
EDGE, which stands for Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies, is the green building standard developed by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group. To be certified, a building must use at least 20% less energy, 20% less water and 20% less embodied energy in its materials than a standard building. The Advanced tier sets a higher bar for energy, generally requiring savings of at least 40%.
The mall’s certification is preliminary, meaning it was awarded on the building’s design. Final certification normally follows once the completed building has been verified.
The biggest contributor to the green rating is a rooftop solar installation with 3.3MW of installed capacity, made up of 5 376 panels and 21 inverters of 120kW each. According to the developer’s projections, it should cut the mall’s grid electricity use by about 31%.
The building’s size, shape and orientation were designed to bring in daylight while keeping the interior cool, which reduces the load on lighting and air-conditioning. It is also designed to use water and building materials more efficiently.
Nedbank CIB Property Finance has financed the development, and its in-house EDGE specialists worked with the developer from the design stage. Nedbank CIB is the only local bank with its own EDGE expertise. It was also the technical expert behind Attacq’s Mall of Africa achieving EDGE Advanced status, which made that mall the largest retail asset in the world to do so. The case for building green is increasingly financial rather than reputational. Electricity and water make up a growing share of a shopping centre’s operating costs, and municipal tariffs have risen well ahead of inflation for years. Cutting grid consumption by nearly a third lowers the mall’s running costs for its entire life and gives it some protection against further tariff hikes and supply disruptions.
Jobs and local business
The development created 1 096 jobs during construction. At the end of 2025, 495 people were working on site and more than 20 small businesses from surrounding wards had been contracted. A project steering committee oversees community engagement and compliance with the project’s development goals. Once the wider smart city is fully developed, it is expected to support around 2 500 permanent jobs.
Exemplar’s growth push
Leratong City is a major addition to Exemplar’s portfolio. The JSE-listed Reit specialises in retail centres in townships and rural areas, working closely with MPD. Its flagship centre is Chris Hani Crossing in Vosloorus, a centre of more than 40 000m² that opened in 2010.
Exemplar has been growing steadily even if its stock is tightly-held and illiquid. In its results for the year to end-February 2026, it reported a 15.3% increase in distributable income, driven by sustained demand across its portfolio. Net asset value per share rose by the same margin, to R19.25.
In late 2025, Exemplar acquired a 50% stake in Tonk Meter Crossing in Springs for R67m and is expanding the centre to more than 21 000m², relaunching it as iTonka Square. In April this year, it bought Vosloorus Crossing, a 10 323m² centre next to Chris Hani Crossing, for R177m at an initial yield of 9.3%. Exemplar said the deal strengthened an already high-performing retail node.
There is growing recognition that township retail is one of South Africa’s largest consumer markets, given the scale of the population it serves. He expects township malls to take on more education and healthcare services, because they are often the most accessible locations for large communities.
Leratong City is one of four MPD and Exemplar centres opening this year. Etwatwa Crossing and iTonka Square have already opened, and Moletsi Mall in Limpopo opens tomorrow, on Friday, October 30.
Three more centres are under construction for 2027: Ntuzuma Mall in KwaZulu-Natal opens on March 25 2027, KwaMashu Point in KwaZulu-Natal, opens on April 29 2027 and Dan City Mall in Limpopo, opens on September 30 2027
That is seven new or redeveloped centres in less than two years, at a time when very few new malls are being built in South Africa’s metros. Developers in the cities are mostly focused on refurbishing, extending and repurposing existing centres. In townships and rural areas, where many communities still have to travel long distances for formal retail, there is still room for new space.
What comes next
With the mall open, attention turns to the rest of Leratong Smart City.
The housing, the private hospital, the commercial precinct and the government service centres are to follow in phases over the next decade and a half. If they are delivered, the mall will sit at the centre of a new urban district, with thousands of households within walking distance and a growing base of shoppers.
alistair@propertyflash.co.za
