Building an educational and medical hub in Ipoh

QI CITY, an upcoming project in Bandar Meru Raya, Ipoh, is ambitious — not only for its aim to inject some RM1.1 billion into the Perak economy but also for the developer’s mission to create a “Harvard of the East”.

“One has to have dreams,” laughs Wawasan Qi Properties Group (Qi Properties) founder and executive chairman Datuk Seri Vijay Eswaran Vijayaratnam as he explains his vision of the development to City & Country.

Qi City is the group’s “most significant” project in Malaysia since it returned to the country in 2008 after having been based in Hong Kong for 10 years since its establishment in 1998. The group’s initial business was also not property development.

“We began as an e-commerce company and as we came up with more products to sell online, we ventured into travel packages,” Eswaran recalls. “At one point, we’d booked a whole hotel for virtually two to three years. Through this, we started the acquisition of hotels, initially existing ones and now we’re in the process of building our own.”

At the present time, Qi Properties’ portfolio features five hotels and two resorts, including Prana Beach villas, Prana Resort Nandana and Patong Beach Resort suites in Thailand, the Asia Leisure hotel in Sri Lanka and the Dogan Hotel in Turkey. It also has 200 acres of undeveloped land in Gua Tempurung in Gopeng, Perak, which it had acquired upon moving back to Malaysia. The plan is to start developing the land after completing Qi City.

Though he hails from Penang, Eswaran says he feels particularly connected to Ipoh. “It is very much like a hometown to me as I completed my education here,” he reminisces.

He does not feel that the group is any less formidable where it comes to planning and implementing Qi City, although it is relatively new to property development. “Challenges are par for the course. You cannot expect a straight and easy road all the time but it’s something we’re prepared to deal with.”

A teaching hospital and city campus

Qi Properties is using special-purpose vehicle Green Venture Capital (GVC) to develop Qi City with China Energy Hua Ren Industrial Investment Co Ltd (CEHR) handling the construction.

A memorandum of agreement on the project was signed by GVC, Qi Properties CEO Chandragesan Suppiah and CEHR chairman Wang Wei in October last year.

The 26-acre integrated development has an estimated gross development value (GDV) of RM1.1 billion and is tentatively scheduled for launch in the second quarter of this year. The developer’s creation of the educational and medical hub will be in line with the Perak government’s five-year master plan to promote medical tourism.

Qi City will comprise three condominium blocks, a tower of serviced suites with a mall on the ground floor, six storeys of staff quarters attached to an 840-bed hospital and the Quest International University Perak (QIUP) campus.

“The objective here is to have a teaching hospital and city campus, to create a hub, a little city within a city,” says Eswaran. “Our aim is to create a university town. We want to turn Perak into an educational hub and we want to set the standard for it.”

The university is estimated to accommodate 7,000 to 8,000 students, around 1,000 of its staff members and an additional 1,000 employees stationed within the hospital.

The 25-storey (including two levels of parking) condominiums will occupy 7.35 acres and offer 768 units for sale. Their built-ups will range from 780 to 1,338 sq ft while the 18 penthouses will be 1,800 sq ft in size.

At RM460 psf to RM660 psf or RM358,800 to RM615,480 tentatively, the typical units are “competitively priced” for the Ipoh market, says the developer.

The average market price for condos in Ipoh is around RM330,000, reveals property consultancy Rahim & Co.

The condo blocks boast such facilities as a gym, jogging track, pool and 1,843 parking bays.

The first building to be opened in the development will be the teaching hospital, which will consist of a private wing for the students and public wing for the general public. The students will be able to do their practical and reside within the development should they decide to invest in the condos.

“There is a shortage of teaching hospitals in Malaysia,” Eswaran observes. “Students have to travel far to complete their practical. That’s why we want to stand out as one of the very few universities here with their own teaching hospitals. When the hospital has a public wing, it must be operated by the government but we’re not certain by which of its agencies yet.

“The concept of a university town is alien to us [Malaysians]. You can get very good colleges in the middle of the cities but their purpose and educational styles are different ... to achieve academic excellence, you need to be isolated from the mainstream of society.”

QIUP will sit on 8.02 acres and have such facilities as a sports complex, central park and 1,055 parking bays. It opened in 2011 and offers a variety of degree, diploma and foundation courses in subjects ranging from business and science to mass communication and tourism management.

With the Ipoh airport located just about 10 to 15 minutes away, Qi Properties is also looking to boost the medical tourism sector with its strategic location and level of integration between its hospital and university.

As for the 1.6-acre mall with the serviced suites, it will have an estimated 120 retail outlets on top of a multi-purpose hall that will double as a convention centre. The 29-storey tower will host 276 serviced suites, of which 184 will measure 688 sq ft and the remaining 92 are 888 sq ft.

Qi Properties’ target demographic is an equal number of investors and owner-occupiers. It is eyeing Malaysian students, particularly those venturing into medicine, and older homeowners who are looking to move into smaller, non-landed units for convenience.

“Bandar Meru Raya is moving at a fast pace — a lot of government offices and the central bus station of Ipoh is already here. It’ll be the new centre of town,” says Eswaran.

Qi City will also be located close to Tenby School’s Ipoh private international campus; Asia’s first animation theme park Movie Animation Park Studios; premier retirement village GreenAcres; and upscale business hotel Casuarina @ Meru.

“We’re confident about our development because it’ll create demand within itself. As an integrated development, it will attract investors, students, their parents and local residents who want to live in a self-sufficient environment,” says Chandragesan.

On the current weak market sentiment, he says, “Qi City is an exclusive development with only about 120 retail units that will serve 10,000 people daily. There will also be at least 1,000 staff members in the hospital, at least 1,000 staff members in the university and around 7,000 to 8,000 students in the development itself. So, demand for this project is definitely there.”

In regard to the residential component, Eswaran says as property prices in Perak are currently among the lowest in the country, the group hopes the condos will be purchased by foreign investors as well, especially under the Malaysia My Second Home programme.

“No other development in Ipoh is this integrated, so with all its components, we’re confident it will be a success,” he adds.

Outlook for Ipoh

Rahim & Co’s Izham Aziz points out that Bandar Meru Raya, where Qi City will be located, is one of the new areas being promoted, especially with its upcoming movie animation park studio. “There is still room for residential developments in Perak and properly planned townships like Bandar Meru Raya will continue to be developed in the state.”

Comments Eswaran, “Perak has just come out of the doldrums it was in for the past couple of years. It has been in a time warp for the last couple of decades, coming out only in spurts.”

Renowned as a historical town and a food haven, Ipoh is home to the Sultan Azlan Shah Airport, which saw 98,768 passengers in 2014. A WTW report published in June 2015 reveals that Perak saw 13.6 million visitors in 2012, of whom 13 million were local.

To tap the economic potential of tourism, the government has initiated the Northern Corridor Economic Region development programme with emphasis on Perlis, Kedah, Penang and Perak. One of the objectives is for the country to become Asia’s medical tourism hub, providing high-quality and affordable specialist medical procedures.

Although the medical sector in Ipoh has grown stronger in the last few years with prominent medical centres, such as the Pantai Medical Centre, Hospital Fatimah and KPJ Medical Centre, they are still unable to fully serve the state’s population. According to Eswaran, medical tourism is “virtually non-existent” in Ipoh. “There aren’t enough hospitals [to meet current public demand], let alone cater for tourists. So, we’ll be fulfilling a public need through a university hospital.”

The group remains hopeful about the future of the Perak property market. “A decentralisation trend [out of Kuala Lumpur] is definitely being observed. Penang and Johor are becoming [economic] hubs in their own right and Melaka is up-and-coming as well. We’re hoping that Ipoh can achieve the same status as Melaka in the near future, hopefully with Qi City,” says Eswaran, adding that new property launches in Ipoh have seen successful take-up rates despite the sluggish market.

Interested in property investments in Ipoh after reading this article? Click here to check out the properties there.

This article first appeared in City & Country, a pullout of The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on Feb 8, 2016. Subscribe here for your personal copy.