AHL Park (Forum Corum)

Ahmet Ahlatcı, a Çorum-born businessman whose Ahlatcı Holding spans gold and jewelry, energy, finance and real estate across 70 companies and 43 export markets, bought a vacant, already-permitted mall site from Dutch developer Multi Development in 2013; Multi had held the site for seven years without building on it. The project was originally announced under the working name “Forum Çorum,” but opened under a different name entirely, AHL Park, on the site of the city’s former Buğday Pazarı (grain market) in Çepni Mahallesi, a short walk from Çorum’s central clock tower landmark.

At roughly 145,000 sqm of construction and 50,000 sqm of leasable space, AHL Park opened with 141 stores as Çorum’s first shopping mall, JLL Türkiye handling leasing and management on a roughly 290 million lira investment. H&M, LC Waikiki, Koton, DeFacto, FLO and Boyner anchor the fashion floor, with Migros anchoring grocery and Media Markt carrying electronics, alongside a cinema (originally Cinemaximum, since rebranded Paribu Cineverse following Mars Cinema Group’s 2022 sponsorship deal) running eight screens.

A 3,000 sqm children’s entertainment center and a 4,800 sqm sports complex round out the property’s leisure floor, alongside 1,500 parking spaces. The property holds LEED Gold, Zero Waste and accessibility certifications, and runs feeding stations for stray animals around the building exterior as a stated animal-welfare commitment.

That gap between the “Forum Çorum” name used throughout the 2013 planning and construction period and the “AHL Park” name it actually opened under reflects how much can change between a mall’s announced concept and its final branding once a developer with existing consumer-facing businesses, like Ahlatcı’s jewelry retail arm, takes over a project first conceived by a different, more generic international developer.