Central Group Committing to Bt1bn Phuket mall
There’ll be a new mall to visit for those staying in the Avista Grande in Phuket, as the Central Group of Companies, the Kingdom’s biggest retail conglomerate, has revealed their plans for the construction of a Bt1 billion outdoor lifestyle mall, located in the island’s Bang Tao area.
According to Group Senior Executive VP of Corporate Business Development, the company will be starting development of the mall, dubbed the “Porto de Phuket”, on a 50 rai plot of land in Bang Tao by 2019, with construction scheduled to finish by the end of that same year.
The construction project will be divided into two phases, with the first phase happening on a 20 rai slice of the plot, which is focused on the development of the outdoor lifestyle mall, which will cover 40,000 m2.
There are already several slots occupied in the project, with formats of Supersports, Power Buy, B2S and FamilyMart in the mall. There’ll also be a Central Food Hall, which acts as a restaurant and a cafe zone, a multi-design house offering various products from some notable designers from across the world.
There will be no shortage of food options for visitors from across the island, including those from Avista Grande in Phuket, as Nick Reitmeier, Executive VP of Food Hall and International Buying for Central Food Retail Co. (CFR), the company that operates Top Supermarket and Food Hall, reports that the company has plans to invest Bt120-150 million for the construction of a new 3,000m2 Food Hall at the Porto de Phuket project.
The interest of these companies in Phuket can be explained by the tourism industry in the area. Back in 2017, Phuket had 16.9m visitors, which brought in Bt399b into the economy. Central Group predicts that the island will see about 20-25mn tourists, who will bring in about Bt555bn within the next few years.
According to Mr. Lertvit says that there is huge potential for Porto de Phuket thanks to the fact that there are few retail chains in the island, while hotels and condos have seen a lot of growth. Phuket, reportedly, has at least 12,000 hotel rooms, 5,000 apartment units as well as at least 2,000 villas.
