Uptowners to have The Mall in a Park

DAMANSARA Uptown will have its own shopping centre come November; making it the first community mall developed in the neighbourhood and will be called Starling Mall.

Also known as The Mall in a Park, the 42,000 sq m, five-storey mall will be surrounded by green landscape measuring over 2,500 sq m complete with shady trees and a man-made winding brook.

The mall will have a rooftop garden and over 200 outlets where 30% are made up of eateries.

“I think this mall will do really well because of the huge population of office workers here which comes up to over 20,000 people.

“Apart from the big office crowd, we expect the mall will draw visitors from elsewhere,” said See Hoy Chan Sdn Bhd chief executive officer Joe Tan.

He said that most of the tenants at the commercial shoplots are supportive of the mall being there as it would attract more people there during the weekends.

He hopes the mall will be a place where everyone can come together, just like the Starling bird, which is known to be a sociable bird who always moves around in groups.

Among other additions to the commercial square is the completed Uptown Residences comprising 380 freehold units spread out over two towers.

There will also be the upcoming serviced residence named Somerset Damansara Utama, managed by The Ascott.

In addition, another office building is expected to be completed in 2019.

With all these new developments in place, there are infrastructure and landscaping plans in tow to give the whole area a facelift.

“We have looked into tackling the parking issues and improving the traffic system, but will start with improving the landscape of the area first,” he said.

The landscaping work which began in April last year costs about RM12mil and is about 70% complete. It includes upgrading the kerbs and side paths to make pedestrian walkways brighter and safer.

Existing streetlights are also being replaced with LED lamps to cut down on power consumption. Plans are in place for proper pedestrian crossings with traffic lights, a bicycle lane and access for the disabled around the square. Drains outside the shops will also be covered, as part of the beautification process.

The upgrading works are expected to end in the third quarter of this year.

“Some of the older shoplots owned by us have already been upgraded and given a facelift with a fresh coat of paint,” said Tan.

In regards to the parking woes in Uptown, he explained that a total of 6,758 carparks would be available once all the development works were completed.

“We are actually providing 40% more carpark bays than what is required by the authorities,” he said, adding that the additional carpark would be built at the mall’s basement and multi-storey carpark which has about 3,333 bays.

“We will also be opening up parking in the basement of office towers during the weekends for the public to park, so I don’t think parking will be an issue anymore,” Tan said.

To improve traffic flow at Uptown, Tan said they are planning to abolish all parking in the middle of the road to make way for a wider three-lane road.

Currently, traffic is at a crawl partly because of vehicles double-parking along the narrow roads. “Traffic dispersal will be faster when we have two lanes for cars coming from OCBC Bank and for those vehicles coming from Jalan 21/1 and Jalan 21/2 and turning onto Sprint highway,” he said.

Also, there will be an opening for traffic coming from LDP entering straight into the mall’s basement.

“We have free shuttle service, two 12-seater vans going around the commercial area every 10 minutes.

“When the mall is ready, we will have bigger buses to transport people from the mall to the nearest public transport facility such as the 1Utama MRT station,” he said

source by:http://www.thestar.com.my/metro/community/2016/04/26/uptowners-to-have-the-mall-in-a-park/