Vendors resist Capitol mall revamp

Vendors operating inside the Capitol mall in downtown Macau have voiced their opposition to the building’s impending transformation into a cultural and creative facility.
The decrepit shopping mall – known as Centro Comercial Teatro Capitol in Portuguese, and once home to one of Macau’s biggest cinemas – opened to the public in 1990. The number of visitors to the mall eventually dwindled, allegedly due to bad management.
The Capitol mall had previously been locked in a lengthy conflict with its management firm over rental liabilities. The management has allegedly been foiling efforts to revive the mall.
However, the committee said in a media conference late last month that the mall would commence operations at the end of 2016, under the leadership of a new management firm.
The group claimed that a settlement had been reached over the conflict and that the old firm will make way for the MOP20 million-project.
The initiative to revive the mall was met with resistance from around seven ground-floor vendors, who accused the committee of acting on its own.
“We respect the idea, but we have to clarify that how the property should be developed has to be based on an unanimous decision by all proprietors, instead of merely the two-term management committee,” the vendors said in a statement published and translated from Chinese by Macau Daily.
The vendors pledged to take legal action to safeguard their rights if necessary, and warned against investing in a project associated with such legal disputes.
One of them told the Times that the opposing vendors would hold a press conference later this month to further explain their stance.
The committee stated in its rebuttal that the vendors were unauthorized to run their business but had allegedly paid 10 years’ worth of rent to the property manager.
The committee expects to encounter more obstacles over the project, as it has to seek consensus from the 50-odd owners of the mall’s 103 retail spaces.