The West Lake area has become a hot spot drawing attention of numerous property developers.
The west of the West Lake has become an investment hotspot drawing attention of numerous property developers, both locally and internationally.
THT Development and Citra Westlake City Development are the two notable property developers who have set up two large-scale urban areas of Starlake and Ciputra International City there.
The pair, upon their success with their property developments, has now been enticing secondary investors to pour money into construction of offices, hotels and shopping centres in the area.
While Citra Westlake City Development eyes local investors like Vimefulland and Sunshine Group to pass on some of their land plots, THT Development has targeted foreign investors, particularly those from Korea.
THT Development, a subsidiary of Korean construction firm Daewoo E&C, is the owner of the 186-hectare Starlake project on the prime location of the West West Lake area.
The company has sold 186 villas and townhouses in the first phase of the project with prices starting from $5,000 a square metre. THT Development is now moving on to construct three apartment towers.
The second phase of the project, meanwhile, will focus on attracting secondary investors to construct offices, hotels, shopping centres, schools, hospitals and other multifunctional complexes instead of residential properties.
THT Development has thus decided to cooperate with Japanese-backed shopping centre developer Toshin Development to build a Japanese-style commercial and cultural centre on a 1.7-hectare area of the Starlake project.
Toshin Development is a business arm of Takashimaya, one of Japan’s leading department stores. Toshin Development established its Vietnam office in 2008 and in 2016 opened the Takashimaya department store within the Saigon Centre premise.
THT Development has also signed an investment deal with Samsung to invest in an R&D centre in the Starlake complex.
Accordingly, Samsung will built a 19-storey building including 16 floors and three basements on a land plot of 11,600 square metrese. The project is expected to start construction in early 2020 and complete in 2022, with a target to become a global-scale R&D centre.
Apart from Samsung, THT Development has also attracted other secondary investors to invest in the Starlake project. The company has signed a transfer agreement of two land plots to Korea’s largest retailer E-Mart to build a shopping centre. It has also cooperated with Korea’s Ssangyong Engineering & Construction Co., Ltd. (SE&C) to set up a hotel, and worked with K-Fashion on a shopping mall complex.
THT Development has additionally sold the B3CC2 land plot to Taseco Invest in a bid set up a complex of hotel, office and shopping mall in the area.
Citra Westlake City Development, a joint venture between Ciputra Group from Indonesia and Urban Development and Infrastructure Investment Corporation, meanwhile, has transferred an incomplete shopping mall project on an area of over 7 hectares in the Ciputra International City to Lotte Group.
Lotte has now changed the planning of the property, with the addition of a hotel and an office for lease adjacent to the shopping centre. The total investment of the project is expected to be $600 million, of a larger scale than the Hanoi Lotte Centre’s.
What’s more, CapitaLand has acquired a land plot of nearly 9,000 square metres on Lac Long Quan road to construct a 25-storey complex, consisting of 380 apartments and 21,367-square metre office and 19,323-square metre retail areas, with a total investment of about $217 million.
Vietnam’s Tan Hoang Minh Group and Sunshine Group are also investing heavily in the area with the former constructing its El Dorado I and II apartment towers, while the latter has been rolling out projects like Sunshine Riverside, Sunshine City and Sunshine Wonder Villas.
