Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Four Seasons Place KL poised for take-off

By Sharen Kaur
Published in NST on January 29,2013


THE 65-storey Four Seasons Place Kuala Lumpur, estimated to be worth about RM3 billion, will take off this year, after over four years of delay.

The project will be launched tomorrow by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

Four Seasons Place, which will be the first in Southeast Asia and third in the world, is designed to complement the Petronas Twin Towers.

It will feature hotel rooms, luxury residences and retail. The product planning took four years.


It is understood that project owner and developer Venus Assets Sdn Bhd may sell the condominium units at more than RM3,000 per sq ft (psf) and the hotel rooms from RM900 per night, setting a new benchmark in pricing within the vicinity.

Venus Assets is controlled by Ipoh-born tycoon Ong Beng Seng, Tan Sri Syed Yusof Syed Nasir and the Sultan of Selangor, Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah.

The Sultan and Syed Yusof are close associates of Ong, who owns Four Seasons resorts in Bali, Singapore and the Maldives.

News of a Four Seasons being developed here by the two tycoons and the Sultan surfaced in 2005.

The project was due to launch in 2007, but postponed because of the global financial meltdown and other setbacks.

Venus Assets then considered launching the project in 2008. The project was to comprise a 72-storey condominium block, later reduced to 60 and a 38-storey hotel building.

The condominium block was to be a joint project between Venus Assets and KLCC Holdings Bhd, developed on a 0.64ha site adjacent to Menara Maxis and owned by KLCC Holdings.

The hotel building was to be built on a 1.04ha site which Venus Assets acquired for RM90 million in 2003, from the estate of the late Khoo Teck Puat, a former shareholder of Standard Chartered plc.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the plan was aborted. Instead, Venus Assets decided to build a 65-storey tower featuring condominium and hotel units at the 1.04ha site.

Piling works for the project, sandwiched between Menara Maxis and Wisma Central, was completed.

The tower was to house 240 hotel rooms, 150 condominium units, six levels of parking and four retail floors, built over four years.

At that time, Venus Assets was looking at selling the condominium units at about RM3,000 psf and the hotel rooms from RM750 per night.

But because of worsening economic conditions, the project was postponed again.

Business Times reported that Venus Assets was considering launching the project at the end of 2009, and then in 2010, but that didn't take off either.

"The plans have changed. We had to fine tune the development plan to meet changing consumer trends. It's going to be an iconic tower and it will change the city skyline," said a source familiar with the plan.

"We have been approached by several fund management companies who want to buy the building en bloc. The shareholders of Venus Assets are keeping their options open," he told Business Times.

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