The Central

I've been here on many occasions since, and even done a case study for my project on this mall; so it makes me pretty familiar with this place. This mall is easily accessible via train from Clarke Quay MRT Station. One thing I always commend on this mall is the exterior design. It is made of glass with special lightings illuminating the mall during the night, giving it the exotic facade. They also make clever usage of the glass rooftop and walls to allow natural light to penetrate into the building, hence energy efficient.

The building is separated into 2 sections. Distinctively one side caters towards the diners, whilst the other provides the shopping experience. The anchor tenants are basically Barang Barang and Harvey Norman. What I realised from my project was that one of the target group of this place is tourist, evident from their shuttle bus plying along the major hotel. It doesn't make sense for tourist or even Singaporeans to come all the way here just to buy that furniture or bulky machine home. It will be more strategic if it's a mall in the heartlands.

What I would say is that the food segment is much successful that the shopping available and the management should do something to perk up the shopping experience. Strong Japanese flavours are seen around this mall. Spotted here are Japanese outlets such as Marutama Ramen, Kyomomoyama, Sho-U, Waraku Japanese Casual and Pasta Restaurant, Hokkaido Ice Cream and many more. The food court is also located on the 4th floor of this segment. Other affairs are also available such as Pepper Lunch, O'Brien's, Manhattan Fish Market, Billy Bombers and Tung Lok Signatures.

Shopping here can be a disaster, not kindly assisted by the complex arrangements of the escalators. The shops located on level 1 & 2 are the more appealing ones, other than that the rest of the shops are mediocre. Irony strikes me when I saw "Level One" is located on level 3 of the mall. Sounds dumb to me but anyway, it is accessible via a direct escalator from level 1. While the concept works pretty well over at Far East Plaza, it seems to be more dead here as the variety of shop is very limited. Plus, there are some units that have been vacant for quite some time.

I would not come here for shopping, but rather you’ll be spoilt for choice by the number of F&B outlets and Japanese flavours that this mall offers.

Great location. But it seem that the selection of shops isn't up to my taste. Also there's limated choice of food here. Which is what I always look for in a shopping mall. A great place, if you're going passing by and want to look around though.