By NST Property - Published on 29, 2022
sharen@nst.com.my
i-City is one of the best developments in Selangor that has a four- to a five-star hotel, according to Tengku Datuk Seri Ahmad Shah ibni Almarhum Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah.
He said that Shah Alam needs a development that has a business hotel like DoubleTree by Hilton to attract additional investment to Selangor.
Ahmad Shah was speaking to NST Property after visiting the soon-to-be-opened DoubleTree by Hilton, where he also met with I-Bhd chairman Tan Sri Lim Kim Hong.
He took the opportunity to look at the 'Charging Bull' at Finance Avenue, which symbolises the resilience of the Malaysian economy and the emergence of i-City as a financial hub.
The Sultan of Selangor Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah will officially launch the 300-room DoubleTree by Hilton on August 11, 2022.
In 2019, the Ruler launched the Central i-City shopping mall, which is a joint venture between Thailand's largest retail property developer Central Pattana group, and i-City.
I-Bhd is the master developer of i-City, which is anticipated to have a better year this year, thanks to signs of recovery and increasing optimism in all of its business areas.
The developer reported a pre-tax profit of RM1.7 million for the first quarter of 2022 as opposed to RM1.3 million during the same time in the previous year.
I-Bhd's Lim has ambitious goals for the group, among them is to turn it into an RM1 billion property company by market capitalisation, through various measures and initiatives.
It would rebuild its pipeline of property development projects to generate RM300 million in annual revenue and increase the yield on its RM1 billion portfolio of investment properties.
A significant amount of money will also be invested in digital technology to keep i-City as the top technology city and to provide the theme park with a Metaverse experience.
The theme park has resumed profitability and experienced a resurgence of its pre-pandemic foot traffic following the shift to endemicity.
There is strong demand for the i-City Convention Centre, given that events and activities could not be organised over the previous two years.
At DoubleTree by Hilton, bookings for ballrooms and event rooms have been made in the first two weeks of the hotel opening, while occupancy at Best Western i-City is now at 65 per cent.
The 52-story BeCentral, which will offer luxury homes and is scheduled to launch in the third quarter of 2022, has received positive reservations, and the 33-storey Mercu Maybank, a Grade-A smart office tower at Finance Avenue, is 80 per cent leased with a healthy pipeline.
The anchor tenant at Mercu Maybank is Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank), the country's largest bank by assets.
Maybank expects to transfer roughly 1,500 staff to Mercu Maybank, to enhance its business continuity management (BCM) and resilience planning.
According to Tang Chee Meng, chief operating officer of Henry Butcher Malaysia, Maybank's set up at Finance Avenue is a further achievement for I-Bhd and enhances the reputation of the i-City development.
Mercu Maybank is a key component in driving i-City to become the financial hub as well as home to global Fortune 500 companies.
With a Tier-3 certified data centre linked to a 400G capable high-availability network, i-City is ready to support the expansion of finance and IT in the services sector.
No comments:
Post a Comment