By Clara Chooi
KUALA LUMPUR, June 26 — Bukit Bintang Plaza (BBP), an iconic 1970s-built mall in the heart of the city’s busiest shopping district, will be demolished to make way for construction on the Klang Valley MRT rail line, mall owner UDA Holdings Bhd said today.
The Finance Ministry-owned firm added that the mall’s 167 tenants, 60 per cent of whom are Bumiputeras, would have to clear out of the building by year-end to facilitate preparatory work on the country’s first mass rapid transit system.
But the announcement, made today by UDA Holdings senior vice-president Syed Ahmad Nazri Syed Kamaruzaman, contradicts MRT Corporation’s last statement on the debacle.
A representative of the MRT project owner had last told The Malaysian Insider that BBP’s tenants could stay put, despite plans to integrate the rail line’s largest station with the mall.
“That is the confusion there. We, in all our meetings, it was made clear to us that they (BBP tenants) would have to clear out because the plaza would be demolished.
“We were shocked when we were told this would have to be done... that UDA would have to surrender such an icon,” Syed Ahmad Nazri told a press conference today after a dialogue with BBP’s tenants.
MORE TO COME