Asia’s largest shopping center has been finished in Tianjin and will soon open to the public, reported the Tonight News on March 21.

SM City Tianjin - one of the world’s largest malls in terms of gross floor area - attracted 400 leading brand representatives to the signing ceremony for the strategic cooperative agreement on the afternoon of March 17.

Leaders from the first group of stores to open at the center, including Yonghui Supermarket, Dadi Cinema and Acasia Food, signed the contract with Steven Tan, vice operation officer of SM City Tianjin.

The mall, with three floors above ground, has a land area of nearly 440,000 square meters and boasts over 1,000 stores and 8,000 parking slots.

Customers will enjoy its standard Olympic-size ice-skating rink and unique science discovery center. There is also a concert hall that can accommodate over 900 people and an eight-story IMAX screen, considered to be the largest in the world.

Established in 1958 by Mr. Henry Sy, Sr., a Filipino of Chinese descent, SM Group has set up six shopping centers in China so far, providing mall operation, hotel, retail (supermarkets, department stores and brand stores), tourism, banking and financial services.

With an investment of about 3 billion yuan ($ 460 million), the shopping center, located in the Tianjin Free Trade Zone, is the largest one-stop mall in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Area.