Friday, November 17, 2006
[RealEdge] TodayOnline : Facelift for grand dame of Orchard Rd
 This story was printed from TODAYonline | |
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| Facelift for grand dame of Orchard Rd Mandarin Gallery to get $180m makeover Friday ? November 17, 2006 Ansley Ng ansley@mediacorp. One of the grand dames on Orchard Road will undergo a pricey $180-million facelift to keep up with the changing face of retail. Meritus Mandarin hotel, built in 1973, will boost its shopping wing three times to brace for a predicted tourist rush within the next decade. It will start revamping its Mandarin Gallery in the first half of 2008, to morph the shopping area into a six-storey "premier luxury mall". When completed in 2010, the new Mandarin Gallery will have high-end retail shops and fine dining restaurants. Overseas Union Enterprise (OUE), which manages the hotel, aims to ride on the wave of "the high consumption power" of "a high number of tourist arrivals", its chief executive officer David Lee told Today. "Tourist arrivals will increase by a fair bit. The target in 2015 is 15 million arrivals," he said. The Mandarin Gallery now has three floors of shops occupied by names such as fashion label Esprit, handbag maker Braun Buffel and silverware maker Georg Jensen. When the facelift is finished, the shopping mall will have 250,000 sq ft of retail, up from the current 75,000 sq ft. Today understands that OUE has approached several luxury brands to take up space in the new mall, which will command higher rental fees than the current average of $9.45 per square foot per month. When asked if existing tenants will be invited to stay on at the revamped mall, Dr Lee said: "Existing tenants will be here if they express interest and fit our profile and portfolio." The upgrading ? announced on Wednesday ? is part of a $450-million plan to revamp three of OUE's properties, which also includes office building Overseas Union House (OUH) and Change Alley Aerial Plaza. In a $250-million move, OUH will be demolished to make way for an 18-storey office tower. In another possible project, OUE may integrate both the Change Alley Aerial Plaza and OUH with Collyer Quay, should they win a bid for the latter site. The tender results will be announced by next month. Property analysts said with so many developments mushrooming in the Orchard Road shopping belt, OUE's move to revamp the hotel's shopping area is timely. "New malls are going to come up in time. They should do something here or else they are going to lose out," said Mr Nicholas Mak, director of consultancy and research at Knight Frank. Mr Donald Han, managing director of property consultancy Cushman and Wakefield, said that rather than being affected by nearby malls that offer luxury goods such as Ngee Ann City and Paragon, the new Mandarin Gallery could "create a better magnet" for retail. "It has the high-end crowd from Paragon diagonally opposite, the high-end pedestrian traffic that goes into Ngee Ann City," said Mr Han. "If they are targeting the high end, it'll probably be well-served by the traffic flow." | |
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// posted by Shajahan @ 4:59 PM 