Lend Lease Group, an international property firm, is hoping to grow its presence in Asia.
According to Lend Lease, 313@somerset, its three-month old mall, has done better than expected, and it is looking for more investment opportunities in Singapore within the next 12 months.
Since the mall’s official opening in December 2009, Lend Lease said it received an average of three million visitors each month.
313@Somerset is one of the three new malls located along Orchard Road. The other two malls are Orchard Central by Far East Organisation and ION Orchard by CapitaLand.
On average, ION Orchard sees customer traffic of more than 4.5 million people each month, said CapitaLand.
ION Orchard was launched in July 2009 with a retail space of 640,000 sq ft, more than twice 313@Somerset’s size of 294,000 sq ft.
Competition in the retail sector is anticipated to intensify, with the two integrated resorts and more shopping options springing up along Orchard Road.
The company said it is looking for measures to reach out to younger shoppers.
“We are in the mid market and our demographic of shoppers now is 20 per cent tourists and 80 per cent locals,” said Ooi Eng Peng, chief executive officer of Investment Management at Lend Lease.
“I think with the IRs, we expect more tourists to come to Singapore, more tourists will come to Orchard Road, and we see it as a positive move.”
Lend Lease said it is currently looking at several mixed-sites under the government’s Land Sales programme, on top of efforts to grow its footprints in markets like Malaysia and China.