BUSINESS: Everest Heights, the nation's first South Asian mall

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram took a major look at the desi community of north Texas. Reporter Cary Darling wrote about Radio Salaam Namaste, described as "the nation’s first 24/7 commercial FM outlet aimed at the South Asian community." (is that true?) But what I found particularly interesting were plans for Everest Heights, a 200,000 square foot mall catering to South Asians that's set to break ground this month. The man behind the project and the radio station is  Jaipal Reddy. From the article:

Radio Salaam Namaste, the nation’s first 24-hour, multilingual, commercial FM station aimed at the South Asian community, hit the airwaves two years ago as a way to promote a plan Jaipal Reddy had been dreaming about since moving from India to New York in the early ’90s to get a master’s degree in computer science.

"That was when I saw an American mall the first time in life," he remembers. "When I saw that mall, I said to myself, 'this is the kind of mall a South Asian community should have.’ "

After moving to Texas for its cheaper cost of living and better weather (he finished his degree at the University of Texas at Tyler), he got a job at Nortel in Dallas. During his free time, he liked to see Bollywood movies but didn’t care for the venues that showed them. So he began organizing screenings at a Dallas General Cinema, then used a shuttered dollar theater in south Irving.

Ultimately, he and business partner Mohammad Abbas and their company, Everest Heights, began to plan their $35 million Everest Heights mall near Interstate 635 and the George Bush Tollway. Due to open in late 2009, it will include a six-screen theater and, according to Reddy, will be the first major South Asian-themed mall in the U.S. and will serve as the prototype for similar developments in Houston and Atlanta.

Currently, Everest is showing movies at Irving’s Hollywood Theater, as well as at an AMC in Houston and a Cinemark in Austin. In the meantime, the company launched an AM radio station four years ago and then moved to FM with Radio Salaam Namaste (KZMP/104.9), named for the words for "hello" in Arabic (salaam) and Hindi (namaste).

"The radio station was always a phase to advertise the mall," he says. "We needed a very good marketing tool, and in the ’70s and ’80s in India, radio was a big thing. Basically, people who come to the U.S. who are settled here, we always miss [things from] back home — radio, movies, food and all that. We’re trying to bring that here to the U.S., and radio is part of that."

The station runs a predictable amount of Bollywood music, but has programming in 9 languages and includes advice shows and club music. The article notes that the station's ratings are really low but it's hard to say whether that pits it against heavyweight mainstream stations or comparable broadcast outlets. One thing I can say - I'm from Texas myself, and there's a much richer tradition of desi radio there than up here in New York. In Houston you can hear a variety of programming, from standard Bollywood playlists to discussions on community issues to Carnatic and Hindustani music. My father, who's an allergist, has frequently appeared on radio shows to talk about health issues and take questions from listeners. I find this a major hole in the desi cultural scene of New York.

You can see renderings of the Everest Heights mall here. According to the Everest Heights website the mall will contain a 6-screen mall, performance hall, fine dining as well as a food court, community center, financial services, clothing stores, grocery stores, a meat market and beauty salon. And much, much more.

The Star-Telegram package also includes an article on the Fun Asia theater complex (see our earlier coverage). 

Farrukh Hamid was a doctor with an office in Carrollton when 9/11 happened, and the horror of those days sparked a realization. 

"It became more and more obvious that there were a lot of misconceptions," he says. "Even today, a lot of people cannot differentiate Indians from Pakistanis from Bangladeshis, Sikhs from Hindus from Muslims. They’re just foreigners, and that creates xenophobia. It’s the responsibility of the smaller cultures to expose other people to it as opposed to expecting everyone to know about us." 

The result was that in 2002 Hamid and his two brothers — who were born in India of Pakistani descent but had lived mostly in North Texas — launched a South Asian cultural center, FunAsia, in an old General Cinema theater. At the core of the project is the multiplex movie theater that shows mostly Bollywood films. The original concept included a restaurant (now closed) and banquet halls (still operating). Also on the premises are the offices of a magazine, FunAsia DesiPages, and a radio station, FunAsia Radio (KHSE/700 AM, also streaming at  www.funasia.net).

More recently, FunAsia attracted the attention of Pyramid Samaira, a theater chain based in India that was looking to expand into North America. The company plans to plow $75 million into FunAsia, expanding the concept nationwide.