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A Mall to Many?

by nigel on 30-Jan-2012
Most every working day I leave the "office" and computer in order to go out for lunch. Today as I passed Subang Avenue, the nearest shopping mall, I heard the drums start up and looking in saw a two lion Lion Dance about to start. So I wandered in to watch.

The Lion Dance troupe was entirely female and performed as well as the troupe we saw the previous evening in the Subang Parade shopping mall a little further along the road. It was only unfortunate that there was only seven people to watch them: Myself; a security guard; and probably friends of the troupe.


Subang Avenue is one of four malls next to each other.

The Empire Shopping Gallery, infamous for the gas explosion a while ago, is now thriving and probably the most upmarket of the malls, there are no mobile phone vendors for instance. The top floor, given over to toddler orientated shops is the quietest and the start of a tall indoor slide so that you can get your youngster down to the ground floor in one go.

Subang Parade is famous for being, or once being, the longest mall in either all of Malaysia or part of it. A fascinating design where the floors on either side of it's length are offset by half a floor and with connecting ramps between them and escalators randomly dotted about. It is possible to spend many a minute attempting to get from where you are to where you want to be and can actually see, a giant snakes and ladders experience.

Next is the Carrefour Mall. A supermarket with other shops, this is the oldest of the malls with little sense of space. Apparently it had an excellent food court, but it has been closed for renovations for some months. It does have combined escalator/ramps (so you can get your trolley between floors) arranged to confuse the unwary.

So we are back to Subang Avenue. The complex consists of four apartment blocks over five stories of shopping space which is mostly empty, thus the lack of audience for the Lion Dance.
The units on the ground floor which front the main road are fully occupied and include a new Tutti Frutti, which provides overpriced frozen yoghurt desserts and is thus usually completely empty and the excellent Old Time White Coffee which does a good trade.
Otherwise each floor contains one or two open outlets with few or zero customers, one or two units that have closed up and the main sound is that of your own footsteps.
The fifth floor has a roller-skating rink which is probably it claim to fame but even this fails to draw the crowds.

Let us see if the Lions can bring some trade to it.