A $50 million mixed-use complex under construction will complete a satellite city on Phnom Penh’s Chruoy Changvar peninsula

Photo by:

HENG CHIVOAN

A view across Young’s Commercial Center and Resort foundations to the residential area of Happiness City.

CONSTRUCTION is under way on a US$50 million mixed-use retail, residential and leisure complex in the Happiness City housing development on Phnom Penh's Chruoy Changvar peninsula, Russei Keo district.

Tep Rathavan, general manager of Happiness City, said Young's Commercial Center and Resort would be completed by 2011.

"We will invest about $50 million to create a high-class mall like the Sorya Shopping Centre," he said.

The 100,000-square-metre complex is to include a modern-format shopping mall, shophouses for residential or office use, a movie theatre and a rooftop resort featuring stand-alone motel units, landscaped gardens and a swimming pool. It will also contain a fitness centre, steam sauna and play areas for children.

Chean Dara, project manager of the development, said $8 million had already been spent preparing the foundations, which required filling and consolidating the reclaimed swampland and driving foundation piles down to solid ground.

We will invest about $50 million to create a high-class mall like sorya.

The complex was designed by Vietnam-based firm Real Architecture and will be built under the guidance of a Cambodian engineering firm.

Photo by:

HENG CHIVOAN

Happiness City project manager Chean Dara.

Photo by:

IMAGE SUPPLIED

Architect plans for Young’s Commercial Center and Resort show its proximity to the rest of Happiness City.

Layer cake

The multilevel design has 123 four-storey shophouses arranged in a horseshoe shape at its base. A further 26 five-storey shophouses provide a frontage to the complex. According to Tep Rathavan, 60 percent of the shophouses have already been sold for between $250,000 and $300,000 each.

A three-storey shopping mall ànd two two-storey arcade malls will be built immediately on top of the shophouses, containing 45,000 square metres of retail space. Space in the mall will be available for between $20 and $30 per square metre per month.

The resort, which will be located on the roof of the shopping mall, features 30 stand-alone motel units scattered throughout a landscaped terrace garden. The motel units would be available to buy or rent, though Chean Dara said an asking price had not yet been decided.

Tep Rathavan said the shopping mall and resort complex were targeting both local people and tourists. "We will have a good bus transport service to pick up customers from Phnom Penh town and take them home again, and we plan to have a music concert every weekend to entice people to visit," he said.

Thap Rity, an assistant to the general manager of Sovanna Supermarket, acknowledged the new mall would affect on his business when completed.  

"I am very worried about it because Phnom Penh city is small with just around one million potential customers, so it is a small market for us," he said.

The city already has a large number of "one-stop" shopping destinations targeting these potential customers. The first major mall, Sorya Shopping Centre, opened for business in 2002, followed by Sydney Mall, Paragon Cambodia and Sovanna.

Young's Commercial Center and Resort is the final phase of development in the Happiness City site, which was built on reclaimed swampland 600 metres along National Road 6A from the Cambodia-Japanese Friendship Bridge.

The first three phases, all of which consisted of villas and link houses, have already been completed. The fourth stage, which cost $15 million and consists of more than 70 villas, is due to be completed this month. Only two of the villas remained on the market, the rest having been snapped up for between $150,000 and $300,000, Chean Dara said.

When the first phase of the development was announced in early 2007, a company representative told the Post the three-storey townhouses would be priced from $35,000 to $60,000.