I know this has been weighing heavily on Suzhou expat’s minds for sometime, so here it is, finally. Definitive proof that Suzhou Industry Park (SIP) will be getting a Burger King Restaurant.
Harmony Times Square, a 100,000sqm shopping mall is planned to open on September 28 this year adding to the increasingly super modern area around jinji lake and the new Suzhou Science and Cultural Arts Centre (pictured), where incidentally you can see English films.
Given that it apparently started construction in April 2006 I’m surprised I missed it, then again, it’s China and I wouldn’t be too flustered if I woke up to an International Airport nextdoor to my apartment. I just hope that this brings more people out to the SIP for the heavily banked on leisure time the deveopers are hoping for. Jinji lake already has two other less amititious yet similarly positioned developments, li gong di (Suzhou’s lakeside Xin Tian Di Clone) and Hu Bin Xin Tian Di (Rainbow Walk, home to Zapatas Suzhou) which appear to be lagging, to say the least, behind what you’d expect from similar lakeside leisure zones overseas despite, their glitzy locations and great bars and restaurants. I guess If you build it they, eventually will come and I have high hopes for the SIP, especially down the track, when with increasing better transport infrastructure being planned and built, more Shanghainese will be pushed north into the SIP to fill the endless apartment towers being erected like forests across the district.
The blue oval out to the left is Suzhou Science and Cultural Arts Centre
I’m sure some of the planned retailers for Times Square will help too. Toys R Us, Parkson, Bestseller among the names already announced. Me though, I’ll probably just be content with Burger King and the fact that I won’t need to fight for a taxi back from the ever chaotic Guan qian Jie after I do my shopping.
Comments 2
Interesting news and can’t wait for that Burger King - perhaps by then I’ll be living in SIP and it wont seem so far away.
A couple weekends back I finally took a drive around JinJi Hu (as part of a wedding party) and was amazed at how much development was way out in what is essentially the middle of no where. It’s virtually impossible to even consider living out on the far side of the lake without a car - that far out and the downtown becomes a whole other city… SND, a different province.
Posted 03 Apr 2008 at 12:51 am ¶I seldom venture downtown. The traffic is terrible and often too hard to grab a taxi. Other than the occasional jaunt down Shiquan Jie to the Shamrock or to buy games for the Wii I have nearly everything we need here. The other side of the lake however is a different story but i’m positive in 2 or 3 years we will be talking about downtown as the old town.
Posted 04 Apr 2008 at 9:12 am ¶Post a Comment