Undaunted by the seemingly protracted economic slowdown, Radium Life Tech Co (日勝生活科技) is to open its Q Square (京站) shopping mall near Taipei Railway Station next September, company executives said yesterday.
“The mall’s launch will provide a big boost to building neighboring Ximen (西門) district into the city’s western shopping hub, in tandem with Xinyi District (信義) in the east,” company president Shen Ching-peng (沈景鵬) told a media briefing yesterday.
The company also expects to benefit from rental income of NT$700 million (US$21.2 million) annually from the build-operate-transfer project, which includes a five-star hotel.
The nine-story mall, sitting on the city’s biggest transportation hub, will target shoppers aged between 18 and 45, general manager Christina Ko (柯愫吟) said at yesterday’s briefing.
Ko boasted about the mall’s great location, saying its VieShow Cinemas (威秀影城), on the fifth to seventh floors, “will be the only theaters in Taipei where movie goers hardly need to walk after they hop off any form of public transportation.”
Pending final contracts, 99 percent of the mall’s space has been rented to vendors. However, she declined to reveal them yesterday.
The project’s attached 700 housing units will be completed and transferred to buyers by mid April, said Jeffrey Liu (劉垚凱), general manager of subsidiary Chi Shun Life Tech Co (集順生活科技).
Despite a slower market, the company also plans to stick to its schedule and begin the release of its 24,000-ping Nangang (南港) project near the Kunyang MRT station in the third quarter next year, company spokeswoman Amme Chau (周惠玉) said yesterday, adding that “the management of costs and duration of construction will be two important elements determining the company’s prospects next year.”
Although its commercial development projects appear promising, the company has begun to feel a pinch in housing property sales.
Liu said that sales of its flagship NT$26 billion in residential properties attached to its MeHAS City (美河市) project in Sindian (新店), Taipei County have recently seen a slowdown.
Less than 5 percent of buyers have further defaulted on their installment payments after suffering losses from their Lehman Brothers-linked fund investments, Liu said, adding that home shoppers now take longer to negotiate deals.
He said most buyers have confidence in the project given its location near Xiaobitan MRT station.
Chau said deals on 60 percent of the project’s 1,900 residential units, worth NT$15.9 billion, have been closed.
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