Businesses at Ratchaprasong intersection plan a major facelift and a new walkway connecting 18 buildings in the area.
Representatives of the five major business groups in the area - Central Group, Minor Group, Erawan Group, Gaysorn Property Group and the Platinum Group - have announced “Ratchaprasong Bangkok Downtown”.
Chai Srivikorn, president of the Ratchaprasong Square Trade Association (RSTA) and chief of Gaysorn Group, said about 60 billion baht would be poured into the redevelopment in the area over the next few years.
The planned projects are Market by Platinum, an air-conditioning market with 7.5 billion baht of investment; the 5.8-billion-baht second Gaysorn office building; the refurnishing of Gaysorn shopping mall estimated at 400 million baht; the improvement of CentralWorld; the 15-billion-baht development of Magnolia residential and hotel projects; and the improvement of Anantara Siam hotel, the old Four Seasons hotel, at a cost of 600 million baht.
He said a walkway would be built to connect 18 buildings around the area, “walkable urbanism”, at a cost of about 400 million baht. It was expected to be completed by next year, and would encourage sales through increased convenience and accessibility.
The overall project was expected to be completed within three years, by which time they expected to attract 600,000-800,000 visitors to the area each day. The area currently attracts about 400,000 visitors a day, or 146 million a year
“We aim to make Bangkok downtown the best destination in Bangkok for tourists and MICE (meetings, incentives, conferencing and exhibition) groups. Ratchaprasong will be one of the top three locations in Asia,” said Mr Chai.
Currently, Ratchaprasong has five shopping malls offering lifestyle products from street fashion to luxury items in over 650,000 square metres of space. It has around 3,900 hotel rooms catering to different budgets and also 382 luxury residential units.
There are another five office buildings with 100,000 square metres of space and around 40,000 sq m of conference space.
Mr Chai said domestic purchasing power had improved since the end of last year and the outlook for this year was promising.