Who Own Aston Villa?

 

When the housing project of "Aston Villa" was launched around 2009 in Bukit Mertajam, a sales gallery with a huge word of "IVORY" was set up on the site. Initially the take up rate was quite promising. 

Aston Villa (not English football club) is a luxury residential project with 3-storey terrace and semi-detached houses with a big land and built-up area. It also contains a row of 4-storey shop offices, and a proposed alfresco F&B outlets space as future development. Its initial price for 3-storey terrace is around RM470,000 about 2 years ago and now it is selling at RM550,000. The semi-D goes above RM800,000 each.

    Aston Villa

From my observation, the construction seems to be in a tortoise pace until recently in 2011, the pace only starts to pick up. I notice that not only Ivory is involved, Dijaya is also the developer of this project, and New Bob Realty is busy selling the remaining units. You can see Aston Villa in Ivory and Dijaya websites.

From the promotion flyer of Aston Villa, it is printed that it is a project by Dijaya, Ivory is the turnkey developer and New Bob is the marketing agent. It just gives me an impression that Dijaya and Ivory do not take this project seriously...

Anyway, is it a good project? Aston Villa is located at the heart of Bukit Mertajam town. If you don't mind the air and noise pollution of a city center, then staying here is quite convenient. However, there is a trend that more and more young people are moving out from the city center to new township at the periphery such as Alma, Bukit Minyak, Juru etc. The streets in BM old town has been dominated by foreign workers especially in weekends and public holidays.

     Retail space

There is a shopping mall BM Plaza adjacent to Aston Villa, which is used as a selling point for Aston Villa. This mall is quickly run out of favour and has been a heaven for foreign workers, especially after the opening of Seberang Perai City featuring Jusco at Bandar Perda. GSC cinema and McDonalds in BM Plaza closed down long ago. Now its anchor tenant The Store supermarket will also leave soon, followed by a few tenants. The buses in the bus terminal there keep on pumping thick black exhaust smoke into the air.

However, if the developer transform this area into an exclusive area and attracts major franchises to its commercial area, Aston Villa could still be a thriving place. But who will do it?