Krungthai Bank has cut the asking price of the shuttered Kad Suan Kaew shopping centre to 2.583 billion baht, down from the 3 billion it first put on the sign in 2024.
That sign is still out front on Huay Kaew Road in Mueang district, four years after the mall closed its doors on 1 July 2022. The building has not aged well, inside or out, and no investor has come forward.
Kad Suan Kaew opened on 29 February 1992 as a 10-storey mall with the 420-room, 13-storey Pang Suan Kaew hotel attached. It was founded by Police Sub-Lt Suchai Kengkarnka and was Chiang Mai’s first really big shopping centre, the place that said the city had arrived in the 90s. For more than 30 years it was where teenagers met up and families went for the day.
The trouble started in 2019. Cash got tight as the economy slowed, shopping habits changed and newer malls opened elsewhere. Accumulated losses reached more than 184 million baht before Covid-19 finished the job. Plenty of locals took the closure personally, since a lot of them grew up there.
The location is still in the middle of town, so why the silence from big developers? Part of it is that the city’s commercial centre of gravity has moved. Nimmanhaemin, Mahidol Road and Chang Khlan took over, and the money has since spread out to Ruam Chok intersection and the second and third ring roads, following housing estates and the people who live in them. Add a price tag that is still steep in a sluggish economy, and investors are in no hurry.
