This article first appeared in City & Country, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on December 4, 2023 - December 10, 2023

WINNER | The Waterfront @ Desa ParkCity | ParkCity Group

When Desa ParkCity was first launched in 2002, the common neighbourhood retail typology in the Klang Valley was the standard shophouse but that did not stop ParkCity Group from reimagining a different kind of marketplace for the 473-acre township’s community.

“It’s very easy to just build shophouses and sell them, but we would not have been able to create a difference,” says ParkCity Group CEO Datuk Joseph Lau. “Unlike most malls in the Klang Valley, The Waterfront is an open-air mall with an open car park. It’s important for us to have an open car park to create a connection with the retail [space]. With a multi-storey car park, it’ll be all boxed up and the experience is lost.

“We also wanted to take advantage of the lake and park, so we put everything together so that the community can come to the mall to enjoy the environment, walk, jog and also have their daily conveniences sorted. Our focus with the mall is mainly for the community.”

Lau says it’s also important for the mall to be low density. “We kept it low density so we don’t lose the essence and soul of what the mall is for. From ParkCity’s perspective, it’s not about maximising land use; it’s about what’s important for the community, which is key. And we think there is a uniqueness to the mall.”

The 2-storey neighbourhood mall, which opened in November 2007, sits on 5.12 acres and has a plot ratio of 1:08. It currently has 91 retail lots and a net lettable area of 124,471 sq ft. It is a popular attraction today for both Desa ParkCity residents as well as visitors, receiving an average of 5,000 vehicles daily, translating to about 20,000 visitors a day.

For its community-centric focus, The Waterfront has been awarded The Edge Malaysia Property Development Excellence Award 2023 for Excellence in Township Community Hub.

Judging by what the mall is today, it has far surpassed the expectations of the developer.

“The truth is, when we first started out, it was a big challenge attracting retailers as The Waterfront does not have a typical retail location in the Malaysian context, such as highway visibility,” says Lau.

“Furthermore, open-air malls tend to be hot and Malaysians go to malls for the air-conditioning. So we built the mall to mainly serve the needs of the township’s residents and we did not anticipate so many [others] would end up enjoying the environment we have created. Thankfully, people seem to enjoy the place and it grew from there. Probably it’s because people’s lifestyles have changed over the years. They have become healthier, and more people now have pets, so they find that this is the place to be.”

According to ParkCity Group retail director Nelly Ooi, the mall started with rents as low as RM1 psf to attract tenants but its rents today range from RM4.50 psf all the way up to RM50 psf, depending on the type of trade.

“When we first started, it was a huge challenge to get the right tenants in because the mall, besides not having highway visibility, was within a gated and guarded area. We started with very low single-digit rents but over the years, our rents have gone up by leaps and bounds,” she shares.

Lau concurs. “It was a big challenge. Retailers’ mindset is that if there is no visibility, they won’t come in, so we had to offer very low rentals to attract them and convince them to come. But I personally believed that when we get it built, people can see it and they will come with time.”

It was also a learning process for the team, Ooi adds. “There was a lot of comparison between what we were offering and the Kepong market. So we had to learn how to evolve our tenant mix. For example, the market wasn’t ready for trades like florists at that time, and we only brought back florists in recent years. But as the community grows, we can see that the progression happened very fast.”

Rents at The Waterfront have recorded a steady annual growth of 5% over the last three years.

The mall currently enjoys 99.5% occupancy and some of its notable tenants are Kenny Hill Bakers, V88, Jaslyn Cakes, Starbucks Reserve, The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Jibby By The Park, The Social, Naughty Babe Dirty Duck, Dragon-I, Dim Dou Duck and Aeon Maxvalu Prime.

The mall’s tenant mix must be relevant for the Desa ParkCity community, says Lau. “Our tenant mix has been more or less the same over the years because we always go back to who the customer is and what their basic necessities are. Because that’s our primary market and our tenants must serve that market.

“The core services that we will always need are a supermarket, laundry services, pharmacies and banks. They may not give the best rental but we need them here because they serve the needs of the community. And given the lifestyle here, we also need bicycle shops and pet shops.”

Next would be the F&B, says Ooi. “When we started, the percentage of F&B tenants was much lower, but over the years we have increased them and they make up about 45% of the tenants today, which is considered quite high.

“We still have our F&B tenants from day one like Coffee Bean and Rakuzen. They have been with us since we opened the mall,” she adds.

Evolving the tenant mix is part and parcel of the retail industry, Lau explains. “F&B trends will keep changing. Some trends continue to work, some don’t. We just have to continue evolving to meet the expectations of our community as well as visitors. It’s not magic. Rather, we just make sure that in everything we do, our focus is on who our community is and what our community wants, and to continue making the place relevant for them.”

While the mall is not the only retail offering at Desa ParkCity, it complements the other commercial properties within the township, namely Plaza Arkadia and the upcoming retail space at Noöra.

“They’re all complementary,” says Lau. “The Waterfront is maintained by us and it’s more of a neighbourhood mall for the family, whereas Plaza Arkadia, which we’ve sold, is more commercial and we let the owners decide on what works best. Currently, [Plaza Arkadia] is very popular for mala hotpot and its offices are very service-driven with tuition centres and dance schools. It’s very different from what we have at The Waterfront.

“Then we’ve got Noöra coming up. It’s not big — about 50,000 sq ft of retail — to cater to the intended demographics such as young, fresh grads and those working from home. It doesn’t compete with the offerings at The Waterfront,” he adds.

Launched in 2002, Desa ParkCity is now almost 85% developed, with 5,740 units of completed properties and a population of about 23,000.

The benefits and convenience of The Waterfront were especially evident during the Covid-19 pandemic. Ooi says: “The community here loved that they could just grab and go because the 5km radius and ‘two person per car’ regulation during the movement control order (MCO) didn’t affect the Desa ParkCity community, and everyone could just walk to The Waterfront to get their daily necessities.”

Lau adds, “The Waterfront was fine [during the pandemic] because it catered to the community. It wasn’t as crowded and business wasn’t as good, that’s true, but the community here loved it because they could walk around freely within the community.

“And when the MCO was lifted but people could not travel yet, I was taken aback at the number of people that started coming here for the green open space and fresh air.”

Meanwhile, the retail team at The Waterfront continues to organise activities for the community and visitors. “Some of the activities like the Light Festival went very well. There were even tour groups from outside the township that came in buses, and the event was quite popular on TikTok.

“As The Waterfront is like the central marketplace, during Chinese New Year, Hari Raya, Deepavali and Christmas, we aim to deck out the mall as traditionally as possible for the community during the festive seasons,” Lau says.

ParkCity Group completed an asset enhancement exercise at The Waterfront in 2019, not long before Covid-19 hit our shores. The initiative gave the mall a refreshed facade with a 5,000 sq ft expansion, brought in 20 new retail outlets and enhanced the mall traffic circulation and visitor experience via a new entrance from the central park to the first floor of the mall; a double volume ceiling with natural skylight and high velocity fans and vertical landscape on the first floor; a grand staircase, escalators and lifts; a sheltered linkway to Car Park 2; and new bicycle bays. In addition to the 226 car parking bays at Car Park 1, visitors now have 409 bays at Car Park 2.

The enhancement exercise, Lau explains, was to further integrate the mall with the park. “So we created another park entrance to the first floor of the mall, expanded the mall slightly to bring in more tenants and made the place greener. We opened [the new section] just before the pandemic.”

“This is also why Jibby by the Park was introduced,” Ooi enthuses. “The mall is essentially an extension of the park and vice versa.”

Lau says ParkCity Group is looking into incorporating more sustainable features at the mall. “The mall already has elements of sustainability with its open-air mall concept and it’s already a low-energy mall as we don’t use air-conditioning and we recycle. And to think that sustainability was not even a buzzword back when we built the mall, but we were already talking about the importance of having green spaces and planting more trees because this helps to cool down the environment.

“For the new section, we have incorporated even more elements of sustainability such as improving light and air circulation, using low-emissivity glass and having more plants. We’re not doing it for the sake of wanting to be sustainable, but because we want to make the open-air mall better.”

And to take it to the next level, ParkCity Group is currently looking into recycling the mall’s F&B tenants’ food waste into fertiliser for the township’s landscaping and using solar panels to reduce electricity consumption in the common areas.

“As landlords, we have to look at the whole environment from maintaining the trees to making the mall greener. The question we have to keep asking ourselves is: How do we continue to keep making it better, especially in terms of sustainability and its low energy footprint?” Lau says.

Meanwhile, ParkCity Group does not have plans to expand the mall. “There were discussions about how big the mall could grow. We won’t want it to go too big because we will lose [this environment]. We just want the right balance. Personally, I don’t want the mall to be any bigger than it is now. I think it’s just the right size,” says Lau.

“We will continue to maintain it properly in terms of upkeep, upgrade what needs to be upgraded such as the car parks and street lights, eventually, and plant more trees. But this will always be a low-density mall that will keep getting better and better,” he concludes.

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