Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store Co (新光三越) yesterday sealed a deal with the Bureau of High Speed Rail to lease a building at Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to turn it into a shopping complex.
The nation’s leading chain department store, which won the 10-year operate-transfer (OT) contract last week for NT$505 million (US$15.6 million), will turn the building into a department store, which is slated to open next spring.
The deal will add 4.5 ping (15m²) of floor space to an adjacent Shin Kong department store that has 260,000 ping of floor space and is also due to open next spring.
Wu Tung-hsing (吳東興), chairman of the department store, said he hoped the OT project would enable his company to better serve residents of northern Kaohsiung.
The government-owned building, located between high-speed rail and mass rapid transit stations in Zuoying, has five stories above ground and two stories below ground. The MRT and high-speed rail stations are connected to it underground.
Chang Tze-yu (張子裕), deputy director of the station area development division at the bureau, said the OT project was part of a transit-oriented development plan to generate revenues and boost prosperity near high-speed rail stations. In the contract, the company may extend the lease by five years if it makes a profit in four of the contract’s 10 years.
Wu Nai-tzu (吳奈慈), regional director at Jones Land LaSalle, a property consulting firm, said the transaction promised a fair profitability outlook in light of heavy passenger traffic flow and scarce retail competition in the area.
Packed into a small room, a drone, bipedal robot, supermarket checkout and other devices showcase a vision of China’s software future — one where an operating system developed by national champion Huawei (華為) has replaced Windows and Android. The collection is at the Harmony Ecosystem Innovation Center in the southern city of Shenzhen, a local government-owned entity that encourages authorities, companies and hardware makers to develop software using OpenHarmony (鴻蒙), an open-source version of the operating system Huawei launched five years ago after US sanctions cut off support for Google’s Android. While Huawei’s recent strong-selling smartphone launches have been closely watched for
The waves of the Aegean Sea lap gently at the tables and chairs of two beach restaurants on Greece’s Halkidiki peninsula. It is an idyllic scene, but one that is totally illegal. Like many others in Greece, the two establishments on Pefkochori Beach do not have a license to set up shop so close to the water. After a wave of protests last summer by locals about bars and restaurants illegally covering beaches with sunbeds and tables, the Greek state is taking action. It is cracking down on rogue tourist practices with surveillance drones, satellite imagery and a special app
South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc, the world’s No. 2 memorychip maker, is to invest 103 trillion won (US$74.6 billion) through 2028 to strengthen its chips business, focusing on artificial intelligence (AI), its parent SK Group said yesterday. SK Group also said it plans to secure 80 trillion won by 2026 to invest in AI and semiconductors as well as fund shareholder returns, while streamlining its more than 175 subsidiaries. The sprawling conglomerate outlined the plans following a two-day strategy meeting, aiming to revive the group after SK Hynix, its main money maker, and the group’s electric vehicle battery arm suffered heavy losses. SK
Luxgen Motor Co (納智捷汽車), a subsidiary of Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車), yesterday said it is again offering a NT$100,000 discount for its entry-level n7 electric vehicle models. The n7’s price has gone down from NT$1.099 million to NT$999,000, Luxgen said, adding that there are 25,000 preorders for the model. MG Motor’s electric hatchback, the MG4, entered the market in the middle of last month, with a starting price of NT$990,000. China Motor Corp (中華汽車), which distributes MG vehicles in Taiwan, said it aims to sell 1,600 MG4s this year. MG, originally a British brand, was acquired by China’s SAIC Motor