The project will be its second "lifestyle" shopping mall, following Playground on Soi Thong Lor.

Thongchai Busrapan, executive vice president of Noble Development, said the new mall would spread over 10,000 square metres, four times the size of Playground.

The Playground shopping centre contains 400 shops.

Noble has not yet finished designing the interior of the new centre, which is scheduled to finish construction in 2009.

Apart from its two shopping malls, Noble Development owns a 600-square-metre outlet in CentralWorld called Manga by Playground, which sells clothing and accessories such as belts, bags and shoes as well as notebooks.

The shop has been open since October 19, but its opening ceremony was not held until November 3. Thongchai said the outlet had received good feedback so far and is expected to generate Bt50 million-Bt60 million in sales by the end of the year.

As CentralWorld is not yet fully operational, the company has not set an exact sales target for the shop's first 12 months. However, Thongchai expects it to eventually receive 1,000 visitors a day.

Noble's retail ventures ac-count for 5 per cent of its Bt2-billion annual revenue.

Thongchai said retail business was likely to grow just 5-10 per cent this year due to numerous negative factors, including the economic downturn.

Nitida Asawanipont

 The Nation