First retail hybrid park in Sunway Big Box

My earliest experience with Sunway must be shopping sprees at Sunway Pyramid but an unforgettable incident during a stay with Sunway Hotel Lagoon Hotel & Resort in 2011 resulted with the sharing a Traveller’s Tale about, My Human GPS.

Key Partners of Sunway Big Box was unveiled in this event

But my most memorable experience with a Sunway property must be with the award-winning Banjaran Hotsprings Retreat where I also discovered the best-kept secret at The Banjaran – Jeff’s Cellar.

At the recent Sunway Malls event for the unveiling of Key Partners at Sunway Big Box, a sudden flashback to my personal experiences was triggered when The Banjaran was mentioned in an introduction to the proud portfolio of Sunway properties.

With a proven track record in turning disused tin mines and limestone outcrops into award-winning developments, Nature’s Capital City developed on 1,800 acres with world-class architecture and nature’s design in Sunway Iskandar, will be Sunway’s largest township, meticulously designed to become a truly complete global city.

Based on my own experiences with Sunway, I was thrilled to learn that Sunway Big Box was among the components being developed on a 24-acre site at Sunway Iskandar and construction was in rapid progress for a scheduled opening in mid-December 2019.

Developed as Malaysia’s first retail hybrid park, Sunway Big Box is the seventh retail development in the Sunway Malls projects that will offer some 7.7 million square feet of Net Lettable Space.

This retail park will be integrated with a 280-room hotel, an office tower and linked to a 38-acre extreme sports park.

Planned with an open-air-warehouse concept, Sunway Big Box is designed with a mix of 13 large format stores and regular retail outlets set within a green space.

On the big screen, an artist’s impression of this two-floor retail cluster showed that it will comprise some 100 retail, Food & Beverage and entertainment stores.

“In the next five years, we will be building the Big Box Hotel, the Big Box Office Tower, a Chinese school – SJK (C) Cheah Fah – as well as expanding the Sunway International School premises,” said Sarena Cheah, Managing Director of Sunway Berhad, Property Division.

“As a Master Community Developer, we continuously emphasise on bringing convenience to the doorstep of our communities by creating a conducive surrounding to live, work, play and be healthy in a safe and connected environment at Sunway Iskandar,” she added.

Sunway Malls and Theme Parks, Chief Executive Officer, H C Chan explained that Sunway Big Box is a unique retail development planned with the future in mind and is aligned to Sunway Iskandar’s masterplan to build Nature’s Capital City.

Supported by a hotel component and an office component, Sunway Big Box aims to be the place for people from all walks of life to meet, shop and socialise.

Chan was proud to announce that at least three-quarters of the tenants will enjoy premier, ground and street-level access, and with 85% of tenancy already signed up, some 60% of the outlets are expected to be opened by their opening date, planned for December 18.

“Sunway Big Box is our second retail development in Sunway Iskandar with Sunway Citrine Hub as our first, opened here last year,” said Chan.

He said that with more than 20 years in property development that have yielded consistently good results, Sunway has earned a strong reputation with retailers and business partners who have strong confidence in their new projects.

“Count me in,” this was what retailers and business partners told Chan when they learnt about the new development happening at Sunway Iskandar in Johor.

Chan happily declared that, “Only when they do well, we will do well!” was an unwritten philosophy in their business partnerships.

Tenant representatives participated in a simply ceremony as they were publicly introduced.

At the event, tenant representatives we invited to participate in a simple ceremony where they were publicly introduced and later, posed for a group photo memento.   

A section of the development in various stages of construction

Among the largest tenants in Sunway Big Box are NSK Trade City (80,000 sqft), SSF Home Improvement (45,000 sqft), BookXcess (32,000 sqft), Golden Screen Cinema (30,000 sqft), Loon Sing Banquet Restaurant (28,000 sqft), MOX co-working space (22,000 sqft), Sports Direct (22,000 sqft), EnerG X Park (16,000 sqft), Ace Hardware (16,000 sqft) and Happy Fish Swim School (8,000 sqft).

Other tenants include familiar brands like Mr DIY, Tomaz, Caltex, Starbucks, KFC, Burger King, Sketchers, Young Hearts, Universal Traveller, Thai Odyssey, Gintell, Guardian, Maxis, U Mobile, Mr Dakgalbi, Absolute Thai, Chicken Rice Shop, Gong Cha, Tealive, Dum Dum Thai Tea, Famous Amos, Tan Ngan Lo, Pet Lovers Centre, Funskate by Cobay, KB Fun and MyNews.com.

Sunway Big Box promises to offer first-of-its-kind experiences with several interesting tenants like Happy Fish, EnerG X Park, BookXcess, NSK and SSF.

Another view of the development in Sunway Iskandar

The first Happy Fish Swim School to open in Johor will feature a 25-meter heated lap pool mainly for kids while the EnerG X Park will offer adrenalin-pumping activities like Zip Line, Trampoline Wipeout, Ninja Obstacle Course and Wall-Climbing, among other physically challenging but fun activities.

To encourage the joy of reading, the first BookXcess to open here has the capacity to carry over 1.5 million books in this outlet.

Meanwhile, home improvement store, SSF, will feature complete show units in different sizes and showcase a range of furniture that matches with flat sizes in Singapore’s Housing Development Board.

To complete the event, guests were invited for a tour of the development to have an overview of the construction-in-progress and to get a perspective of how close the site was to the Second Link bridge into Singapore.

It was a comfortable drive through a network of roads, already in place since the construction of this project started two years ago.

I saw clusters of buildings in various stages of construction and was informed that the EnerG X Park was recently opened.

The building for Sunway Big Box will be linked to KFC, located above Caltex station (already opened!) and Starbucks, that will offer drive-through facilities.

As we passed through the site, it was easy to visualize a vibrant Sunway Big Box, Malaysia’s first hybrid retail park, that was fast taking shape in Sunway Iskandar.