BCorp to launch luxury apartments

By THE STAR

KUALA LUMPUR: Berjaya Corp Bhd (BCorp), undeterred by current weak property market, will be offering for sale tomorrow 287 units of The Ritz-Carlton Residences Kuala Lumpur, Jalan Sultan Ismail with prices starting from RM2,500 per sq ft.

These prices are about RM500 lower than competitor Four Seasons Place by Venus Assets Sdn Bhd, located about 500m away along the same road.

BCorp wholly-owned Wangsa Tegap Sdn Bhd director Datuk Francis Ng said weak property market was “a perception”.

Ng, who is also Berjaya Land Bhd chief executive officer, said selling the 200-odd units will “not be an issue” and he expected about 60% of them to be sold by the end of this year.

He said the company would be marketing the project here and in China, Hong Kong and Singapore.

This will be the third Ritz-Carlton Residences in South-East Asia. It was sold at about S$5,000 per sq ft in Singapore, and between US$3,000 and US$3,500 per sq ft in Bangkok, he said.

The Ritz-Carlton Residences Kuala Lumpur, which has a gross development value of RM1.18bil, is part of a mixed integrated project on 2.7 acres known as Berjaya Central Park at the Jalan Sultan Ismail-Jalan Ampang intersection.

Besides the branded units which come with 24-hour five-star hotel services, the project has 497,000 sq ft of office space located in a block known as Menara Bangkok Bank. The two 48-storey blocks will be located on a nine-storey car park podium. The bank hall will be on the ground floor.

The office block is linked to the Bukit Nanas monorail station. The closest light-rail transit (LRT) station is the Dang Wangi LRT station.

This is the second re-launch for Berjaya Central Park by BCorp. In 2004, the company launched more than 1,000 SoHo (small office/home office) units on the same site, with a GDV of RM700mil, about 1.69 times less than the current value.

Said Ng: “We decided to change the design and layout of this property. In the golden triangle, this (land size and location) is hard to come by.”

The land was purchased in 1995 at RM790 per sq ft. Land prices in the city has climbed with a 3-acre Jalan Ampang site located between Wisma Central and a Chinese temple – current site of Pelita Nasi Kandar – sold for RM3,300 per sq ft last year to Singapore developer Oaxley. The vendor was Loke Wan Yat estate.

A 3.18-acre site in Jalan Bukit Bintang was sold to Offshore Triangle Sdn Bhd, a joint-venture between Tropicana Corp Bhd and mainland China developer Agile Property Holdings Ltd for RM3,280 per sq ft yesterday. The vendor was Tropicana Corp.