Boutique Malls

Some of the mall projects we have done, you can also discover more about it in the media:

1. Saigon Garden

Saigon Garden is one of our typical boutique mall projects focused on F&B. We turned a complex group of single houses into a modern, lively complex. This investment helped us attract international tenants willing to pay higher rates, and we recovered our renovation costs in 2.5 years. Now, in its ninth year, it’s fully occupied at over 90%.

Saigon Garden during renovation (2015).

Saigon Garden today. We still have a 600m2 space on the 3rd floor and frontage on Nguyen Hue street. If you are interested, please contact me.

A typical corner: the renovation gave us a skylight in the alley and let us use the inner spaces. Before, these were just alley houses with no rental potential. Currently on the left of this area is a barbecue restaurant, on the right is a vegetarian restaurant, and the rooftop is a seafood buffet with beer, very comfortable for an afternoon after work in Saigon.

2. The Garden Mall

The Garden Mall (formerly called Thuận Kiều) is a memory-filled building for Saigon people. It was once the tallest building in the city, built to welcome the wave of Chinese coming to Saigon after Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997. But then, for many reasons, it was abandoned. Twenty years later, we approached the building with an idea to breathe new life into it—turning it from a closed space into an open one, targeting young customers to shake off the gloomy reputation the media often painted around it.

Working on The Garden Mall was probably the most tiring time, but also fun and full of lessons. Then, in 2017, it finally opened.

The team who built The garden mall (2017) ^^

TGM had to restructure twice because getting people to visit the 2nd and 3rd floors was a challenge for a long-structured building like this. We came up with the idea of cutting the floor to add stairs, so ground-floor tenants (restaurants) could rent the 2nd floor too for their business—and some agreed. But then COVID-19 hit, and the owner decided to turn it into a field hospital.

Okay, fine. From a mall, it became a field hospital with nearly 1,000 beds for mild cases. During the pandemic, we worked until 10 p.m. to make sure supplies arrived on time for the workers. After two weeks, it was done and handed over to the government. Personally, even now, I think it’s better suited as a hospital or some kind of medical service facility rather than a shopping mall.

Four years after COVID-19, now that the government has returned management rights, we’re still running part of the mall. When I first came here in 2016, it was a crumbling building. Now, almost 10 years later, it feels like a full cycle again.

3. The Mall

The Mall is a shopping center project we acquired in 2018 after successfully opening The Garden Mall. It took quite a bit of time to evaluate the legal aspects and investment options. The ceiling height was pretty low, and the layout was poor with lots of hidden corners—a real shame because its location was great, right in the heart of District 10. It had the potential to become another Vạn Hạnh Mall.

In the end, we couldn’t figure out a way to make it profitable, so we decided to transfer it through a company split transaction in 2021. Some things aren’t meant to be exploited.

There are still a few images of the ideas we planned to implement. We didn’t achieve much with this project, but I learned a lot about due diligence, buying and selling assets, and dealing with banks for loans.

As of now, it seems like it’s still not operational :)