City Square Mall in Little India: eco-friendly features

A green meeting place
Anchor tenant NTUC FairPrice rolls outeco-friendly practices
Loh Chee Kong, Today Online 2 Sep 08;

CITY Development Limited’s (CDL) new eco-friendly City Square Mall in Little India has won accolades from government agencies, architects and ordinary Singaporeans alike. But it also means that its anchor tenants, which were unveiled yesterday, have a tough act to follow.

With the rest hard at work to come up with green practices before the $250-million mall’s opening at the end of next year, one of them, NTUC FairPrice, has already thrown down the gauntlet.

Apart from pledging dedicated checkout lanes for shoppers with reusable bags — a first in Singapore — it will have a section solely for organic products. The 26,000-sq-ft FairPrice outlet will also installmotion-sensor lighting in its office and storeroom, which means they only light up when someone is inside. It will also have energy-efficient LED lights in its chillers and freezers.

Said FairPrice’s managing director Seah Kian Peng: “All the tenants will want to make sure that we blend in with the theme, that we can also do our part to reinforce the growing awareness of going green.”

According to CDL, 70 per cent of its shop space have been taken up, with basic rentals ranging between $8 to $15 per square foot a month. The completed mall, located at the junction of Kitchener Road and Serangoon Road, will boast more than 250 shops, with 25 per cent made up of food and beverage outlets.

Other than FairPrice, City Square Mall will feature eight other anchor tenants, including Metro, Best Denki, Popular and Kopitiam. While these are household names with Singaporean shoppers, they will each offer a new retail experience by going green.

Their landlord will be “encouraging and facilitating” such measures, said Mr Chia Ngiang Hong, CDL’s group general manager.

City Square Mall’s eco-friendly features — including urinals that do not use water and sensors that monitor carbon monoxide levels in the air — saw CDL becoming the first private developer to clinch the Building and Construction Authority’s Green Mark Platinum award last year.

It also won the Cityscape Asia Real Estate Award for Best Developer this year.

Directly connected to the Farrer Park MRT station, the 11-storey shopping centre would feature an adjacent 47,000-sq-ft park.

Targeted at the heartland population, Mr Chia said the mall would capture the crowds from residential estates along the North East Line, where “there seems to be shortage of good shopping areas”, according to a survey by property research firm DTZ.

CDL expects to attract 1.3 million people to the mall each month. While consumer sentiments appear to be weakening due to the economic slowdown, Mr Chia pointed out that the “buying sentiments of the heartland population will always be there”.

Ms Corinne Yap, CDL’s deputy general manager of marketing and leasing, believes the mall can also cash in on the fact that Little India ranks as one of Singapore’s top three tourist destinations.

“We hope that tourists will use our mall as a meeting place ... walk around Little India and come back for lunch later on,” said Ms Yap.