When you have been to Montpellier before, you might know the Odysseum. That is a area with Restaurants (Les 3 Brasseurs, Subway, Sushi Bar…), Kart racing, Bowling, the Aquarium Mare Nostrum, Cinema, Tram and so on.
Now the new Centre Commercial was opened last thursday. Around 100 shops or even more. Two levels. Pretty much stretched. Long ways to walk. A big Geant Supermarket (Wall Mart size, pretty big) is there (opened til 10pm). The rest is opened til 8pm.
But even before this Mall was opened the area had traffic issues. The Odysseum is one part. At the other end is IKEA and a DECATHLON Sports store. Especially at IKEA is usually a lot of people. Meaning also a lot of traffic going to IKEA. On wednesdays, when many kids have no school Moms go to Ikea with them for lunch. The two lane road in each direction is divided by many small roundabouts. That is the main problem. There is trafficjam all the way down. They now start to build some extra roads, but for now, it is a real mess. When I arrived today at 7:20pm there was traffic jam out of the new Mall parking. Why ? Because many people did not pay the tickets. Why ? Try to find a Ticketmachine. A security guy was manually checking the tickets. The first 2 hours are free, after that you have to pay by the 30 minutes/hour. So oeple with longer stay had to go back into the Parkinggarage and find the machine to pay the ticket. I tried to find it later as well. Not that I needed it, but I was curious. Either my glasses are bad or they really have not enough machines and definitely not enough signs. That might be the result of finishing the Mall in the last minute. Thats at least what I hope. Because that will cause lots of unsatisfied customers.
The Mall itself is „Open Air“. No roof or so…For most time of the year defininetly good, since it rains usualy only in October/November and spring. That at least saves a lot of money for Air Conditioning. Not like the Malls in the USA. Where you have simple Isolation and in the hottest summer the AC cools down the temperatures to freezing. So you almost need to go shopping for winterstuff 🙂
The Mall is stretched loooong. So long ways to walk. Not really nice. Lots of shops. Not much to see for us men (ok there are beautiful woman running around..but I mean High Tech stuff). One Darty Store and some small game shop and the big GEANT. The rest is Restaurants and Clothes…
So far I have to admit, I like more the Polygone Shopping Center in the center of Montpellier with the historic town. It is much nicer to walk throught the small roads with Dagmar and watch the stores there. The new Mall also has no Toys R Us (that is in Lattes a few miles away) and JouéClub (in Montpellier) for kids. So we will see how this Mall will end up in the future. Looks like some unexperienced guys tried their first big thing and nobody was there to teach from older projects and eliminate some problems from the beginning.
Here is a picture I took with my mobile:
    
Here is the homepage (in french): http://www.centre-commercial-odysseum.com/
Enjoy
Marc-Eric