Timor Plaza
Shopping mall
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Timor Plaza is a shopping centre in Dili, capital city of Timor-Leste. Part of the Dili Central compound,[1] it is located on Avenida Presidente Nicolau Lobato in Bebonuk, one of the sucos of Dili.[2][3] As of 2021, the compound included six office buildings, a hotel, supermarkets, restaurants and a cinema.[4]
- Avenida Presidente Nicolau Lobato, Bebonuk
- Dili, Timor-Leste
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_(cropped).jpg) Timor Plaza in 2023 | |
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| Coordinates | 8°33′S 125°32′E |
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| Address |
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| Opening date | October 2011 |
| Website | Timor Plaza |
History
The centre was the first modern shopping mall in Timor-Leste.[1][5][6] It was built by Dili Development Company Lda. (DDC), a member of the Jape Group of Companies.[1][3]
DDC was established in 2009.[1] Construction of the shopping centre had begun by mid-2010; at that time, the first phase of the whole 5 ha (12 acres) Dili Central development was expected to cost US$10 million, as part of a US$30 million total.[7]
The family-owned Jape Group had been founded in Darwin, Australia, in 1976.[8] Its founder, Jape Kong Su,[8] was a Balibo-born East Timorese of Chinese descent,[9] who had fled from the former Portuguese Timor during its invasion by Indonesia the previous year.[10]
In 1999, Jape returned to his Timorese homeland to assist in the process of national reconstruction.[11] Through his companies, he became the country's biggest private sector investor, with the companies' Timor Plaza project being a substantial privately funded landmark in the rebuilding of Dili.[12][13]
Realisation of the project generated controversy. The Jape family was accused of evicting many families from the project site, and thus prompting tensions among developers, local landowners, and a local non-governmental organisation (NGO), Matadalan ba Rai-Haburas Foundation, which assisted the evicted families.[14]: 492 Another local NGO, La'o Hamutuk, claimed that the Jape family's projects had not only displaced "local people and vendors", but also violated environmental laws.[4]: 18 Eventually, by early 2013, the developer compensated 192 families, most by agreement, but a few only after they had taken their cases to court, and obtained a determination that their land had been illegally expropriated.[15]
Meanwhile, Timor Plaza's first phase opened in October 2011.[16] Six months later, in March 2012, an article in The Sydney Morning Herald commented that the shopping centre was:
"... a multimillion-dollar statement of faith that [Timor-Leste's] future will be more affluent than the present and more stable than the past."[5]
The article went on to quote Timor Plaza's sales and marketing manager as saying that the centre's market was "the A and B demographic". However, it then reported that the centre's interior had been "deserted", and opined that "... signs of an affluent middle class are scarce ..." both in the centre and in the streets.[5] By contrast, an article published by The Myanmar Times in December 2014 described the centre much more positively as "... a spiffy new shopping mall that would not be out of place in Singapore ..."[17]
At a ceremony held in December 2023 that included a store blessing and local music, the President of Timor-Leste, José Ramos-Horta, inaugurated Jack's of Timor-Leste, the first department store to open at Timor Plaza, and in the country generally. The store, located within the CBD 10 building at Dili Central, is part of a chain operated by Jack's Retail, a Fiji-based company with around 50 outlets in Fiji and others in Papua New Guinea.[18][19][20]
Description
Timor Plaza is four storeys high.[7] As of 2021[update], the Dili Central compound, of which the shopping centre is a part, included six office buildings, a hotel, supermarkets, restaurants and a cinema.[4] That year, La'o Hamutuk claimed that the compound:
"... has lured shoppers and offices away from commercial areas, hurting local businesses.
Most banks and phone companies have moved there, as well as some state agencies."[4]
Earlier, an article in Southeast Asian Affairs, an annual review published by the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore, described the Timor Plaza of 2014 as "... a bustling shopping mall with fancy establishments like cafés, restaurants, fashion stores, bookshops, a cinema and even an Apple Macintosh outpost."[21] The article also observed that the centre has upmarket office facilities occupied by many international tenants.[21]
The more downbeat assessment of The Sydney Morning Herald, in its 2012 article, was that the centre had bleached interiors, glass-sided elevators and fluorescent lights that made it "... the cousin of every shopping mall in almost every city in the world."[5]
