Spencer Plaza (Tamil: ஸ்பென்சர் பிளாசா) is a shopping and office complex on Anna Salai, formerly Mount Road, in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The present complex opened in 1991 on the site of the historic Spencer & Co. department store, which had been destroyed by fire in 1983. It is widely described as India's first modern shopping mall and became one of Chennai's best-known commercial landmarks during the 1990s.

The complex combines retail and office accommodation and occupies a site of about . Although its total developed area has been reported at about , an Asipac survey of Indian shopping centres, Spencer Plaza was ranked eleventh nationally by gross lettable retail area in March 2010, at .

Name and background The name derives from Spencer & Co., a business whose history in Madras dates to 1863. Accounts of its early years identify Charles Durrant and John William Spencer with the Mount Road concern from which Spencer & Co. developed."Heritage", Spencer's Retail, accessed 25 September 2026. By the late nineteenth century the business had grown into a large department store. In 1895 it was described as the first department store in the Indian subcontinent, with more than 80 departments.

Under Eugene Oakshott, Spencer's moved into an imposing purpose-built store designed by W. N. Pogson in the Indo-Saracenic style. A contemporary account published in Southern India: Its History, People, Commerce, and Industrial Resources described a succession of richly fitted rooms containing an unusually wide variety of merchandise, reflecting the scale Spencer & Co. had reached by the early twentieth century.

History The nineteenth-century Spencer building remained a prominent feature of Mount Road until a major fire destroyed it in 1983. The modern complex was subsequently developed on the same site. Later reporting records that businessmen Washy Sadarangani and M. Balasubramaniam took over the property and began construction in 1987; Chellaram of Singapore later joined the project.

The mall opened in 1991. Development continued afterwards under Mangal Tirth Estate Limited, and the complex expanded in successive stages during the 1990s and early 2000s. Technical and press accounts have commonly described three principal shopping-and-office phases, while mall management told the Times of India in 2016 that a fourth and final phase had been completed in 2001.

The mall's opening marked a change in Chennai's shopping culture. Central air-conditioning, escalators, large-format shops and an enclosed public shopping environment were still comparatively novel, and Spencer Plaza became a popular meeting place as well as a retail destination. Its interior also retained a visual link with the site's earlier history, incorporating architectural elements recalling the Indo-Saracenic Spencer building.

Building

The plaza is an eight-storey shopping-cum-office complex of approximately 1.068 million sq ft, consisting of nearly of air-conditioned shopping units and of office units. The shopping arcade is located on the ground, first and second floors in all three phases, and the office units are spread between the fourth and the seventh floors. The car parks are spread over the basement, ground, second and third floors, in addition to double basement parking lots in the third phase of the building.

The first phase of the building consists of about 300,000 sq ft, including about 125,000 sq ft of centrally air-conditioned shopping space and 100,000 sq ft of office units together with about 75,000 sq ft of service areas. The second phase consists of about 400,000 sq ft, with a provision for about 600 cars at the basement, with shops with various sizes ranging from 300 sq ft to 2,000 sq ft. The third phase covers another 300,000 sq ft. The theme of the third phase is based on colonnaded structure recreating the old Spencer's around a full-height atrium.

There are over 700 shops in the plaza and over 22,000 people visit the plaza every day, with the number increasing to 40,000 on weekends and to 60,000 on festival days. The complex has three counters to keep track of footfalls. Over 20,000 two-wheelers check into the parking lot on weekends.

Technical and safety aspects

Being a high-rise building, the complex has a wet riser system and electronic fire alarm system installed. The underground sump has a storage capacity of . A ring main surrounds the building from the pump room. Five wet risers run from basement to the second floor and three run from the fourth floor to the seventh floor. These risers are located at strategic points in each floor. The pump room has three pumps, one jockey pump, one main pump with an electric motor and one main pump connected with a diesel engine. The electronic fire detection system comprises smoke detectors and manual call points located in various points in common areas in all floors, sub-stations, electrical rooms, A/C plant and so forth, which are connected to a centralised computer located at the enclosures of the chief security officer. There are also many portable fire extinguishers at each floor in different locations. The rear periphery of the building has fire escape stairs, with fire escape routes displayed with signboards at various points of the building. The car ramps can also be used as fire escape routes. The building has two entrances, one from Binny Road and another from Anna Salai, for fire engines.

Fire safety includes a water capacity of 1.2 million litres, fire sprinklers, smoke and heat detection systems and fire extinguishers. The in-house fire department has six firemen per shift.

Shops

The mall hosts major anchor stores such as Westside (spread across 20,000 sq ft) and Landmark (40,000 sq ft), and several local and international brands such as Nike, Adidas, Bata, Regal, Health & Glow, Vummidiars, Van Heusen, Proline, Allen Solly, Florshaim shoes, Lipton, Louis Philippe, Titan, Levi's, Casio, V.I.P. Luggage, Spencer & Co (40,000 sq ft on the ground, first and second floors), Timex Watch Showroom, Swatch, Cookie Man, BPL (Profx), Color Plus, Navigator, Witco, Pantaloons (26,000 sq ft), Arrow, Lee, Music World (now closed), Food World, HSBC, ABN AMRO, American Express, Citibank (65,000 sq ft in second and third phases), First Flight and Du Bowl (16,000 sq ft). McDonald's, the world's largest fast food chain, has established an outlet.

On 26 February 2004, the Sri Lanka Export Development Board (SLEDB) established a trade centre at the complex at a cost of 17 million. The Sri Lanka Trade Centre is spread over 20,000 sq ft on the first floor at the third phase of the building. Seventeen frontline Sri Lankan companies display apparel, artificial flowers, confectionaries, footwear and leather products, gems and jewellery, herbal products, light engineering products, porcelain, tableware, Ceylon tea and toys.

Incidents On 4 September 2008, a fire erupted on the first floor of the building's first phase around 10:20 p.m. local time, perhaps due to a short circuit. A garment shop was burned in the incident. With the help of 12 water tenders and 9 fire tenders, the fire was extinguished within 30 minutes, and no casualties were reported. The firemen had easy access to the spot, mainly due to the setback space available inside the building.

References

External links

Spencer Plaza e-commerce website Mangal Tirth official website