Crane Management Limited, which is part of the Ruparelia Group of companies, on Monday, unveiled a high standard commercial building in the center city called Hardware City, along Entebbe Road. The building was opened by Sudhir Ruparelia, the proprietor and chairman of Ruparelia Group.
The complex, estimated at US$ 25 million is the first of its kind in Uganda and will be a one stop entre for hardware equipment in the city.
In his speech, Sudhir, the Chairman of Ruparelia Group, said, “When starting to work on this project, what we had in mind was to provide a one stop centre to provide hard ware products and services.”
He added, “This would help customers to buy everything in one place. We wanted to create a situation where a customer doesn’t move from one place to another looking for hardware goods or services.”
The building complex is seated on a 27,000 square metre site, with 281 shops, 66 apartments and a parking lot capable of accommodating 800 cars. The state of the art complex was constructed in 18 months. Every square meter is able to support a weight of upto 650kgs.
For the building’s power supply, a 500kv transformer has been procured and a three phase distribution line will be implemented for the tenants. There are future plans to have a top-up prepaid sub metre for each tenant.
At the unveiling, Mr. Ruparelia announced that for the first 2 years there will be no increase in rent and that the tenants will be required to pay in Uganda shillings instead of US dollars as they’ve normally do with other building complexes around Kampala.
Crane Management Services will handle the day-to-day management of the property.
