Iskandar Property

By NELSON BENJAMIN

JOHOR BARU: Some 5,000 jobs are expected to be created with the establishment of the Legoland Theme Park in Iskandar Malaysia.

Iskandar Investment Bhd chairman Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar said that job opportunities would be available during various phases of the project in the next five years.
‘Play well’: Jakobsen and Lego characters in Johor Baru yesterday.

Theme parks have a proven track record of attracting a large volume of visitors.

Legoland would be Malaysia’s first international theme park, he said, adding that tourism was one of nine key economic pillars under Iskandar Malaysia’s comprehensive development plan.

The Lego Group started humbly in the workshop of a Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen. The word, lego, is an acronym of the Danish words ‘leg’ and ‘godt’ meaning “play well”.

Legoland parks are based on the popular Lego toy construction game.

The first Legoland Park was opened in Billund, Denmark, in 1968 with three more parks in London, California and Germany. Continue Reading »

By MEERA VIJAYAN

JOHOR BARU: The new Sultan Iskandar Customs, Immigration and Quarantine (CIQ) complex will be fully operational tomorrow and replace the Causeway checkpoint in the city centre, which will be closed.

This means that all vehicles travelling to and from Singapore will have to use the new complex to get their passports stamped and Customs checks.

The RM1.3bil new complex, which has 76 lanes for cars and 100 for motorcycles, was partially operational on Dec 1 when vehicles from Singapore were diverted to the complex for a drive-through after completing their Immigration and Customs procedures at the Causeway checkpoint.

Starting tomorrow, all vehicles coming from Singapore must also use Touch ’n Go cards to pay toll as they enter Malaysia.

Previously, at the Causeway checkpoint, toll payments could be done with cash and Touch ’n Go cards.

Johor traffic police chief Supt T. Raveendran said full operations of the complex would start at 12.01am tomorrow and would involve all cars, buses, vans and motorcycles. Continue Reading »

By ZAZALI MUSA

JOHOR BARU: Work on the RM750mil Legoland theme park at Bandar Nusajaya in Iskandar Malaysia will start in 2010 and the opening slated for 2013.

The park, to be built in the city centre of Nusajaya, will have a 5.5 million sq ft of gross floor area within the 58.679ha land dedicated for the lifestyle-theme development.

Merlin Entertainment Group Ltd managing director for Legoland Parks, John Jakobsen said the theme park would create about 1,000 job opportunities in the park itself and it could reach up to 5,000 during construction period and indirectly upon the completion of the project.

Sectors which would benefit from the opening of the park would include retail, hospitality, services and food and beverage to cater for tourists and visitors.
John Jakobsen

“We want to position our Johor park not only as a leading tourist attraction in Malaysia but also in the region,’’ he said.

Jakobsen said the park was expected to attract between one and two million visitors yearly. Continue Reading »

JOHOR BARU: The new Sultan Iskandar Customs, Immigration and Quarantine complex is expected to cut traffic congestion on the Causeway by more than half.

Johor Immigration director Mohd Nasri Ishak said the new complex was designed for smoother traffic flow to and from Singapore.

“Traffic congestion has always been a major problem at the Causeway. We hope that with the new building, some of the traffic woes can be solved,” he said at the complex here yesterday.

He said operations at the building would be eased in two phases.

Under Phase One, which started at 12.01am yesterday, inbound passengers were routed through the new building after immigration clearance at the old Causeway checkpoint.

Mohd Nasri said for the next two weeks, they would monitor traffic flow to uncover hiccups, if any.

Phase Two would begin on Dec 16, with both inbound and outbound vehicles directed to the building. Continue Reading »

JOHOR BARU: The largest Customs, Immigration and Quarantine (CIQ) complex in the country will be the transit point for more than nine million people travelling between Malaysia and Singapore each year.
The Sultan Iskandar Building is expected to be the busiest land entry and exit point in Malaysia, with some 135,000 vehicles passing through daily.

Yesterday, the complex was launched by the Sultan of Johor, Sultan Iskandar. The sultan was accompanied by his wife, Sultanah Zanariah Tunku Ahmad.

Also present were the Tunku Mahkota, Tunku Ibrahim Ismail, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Johor Menteri Besar Datuk Abdul Ghani Othman.

In his speech, Sultan Iskandar said the state was fortunate to have such a building, which will serve as a main entry point into the country.
“The building is a landmark in Johor’s history. Hopefully, it will provide better amenities for the people,” he said.

Abdullah, in his speech, said the complex would operate round the clock, providing the best facilities to travellers.

He said the RM1.3 billion building at Bukit Chagar would house 21 federal and state government agencies, as well as private firms. Continue Reading »

THE Sultan of Johor is expected to open the much-awaited RM1.3 billion new Customs, Immigration and Quarantine complex in Bukit Chagar on Monday.
State Local Government, Housing, Works and Public Amenities Committee chairman Datuk Ahmad Zahri Jamil said the public could use the complex after the opening ceremony by Sultan Iskandar.

Ahmad Zahri said some government agencies had already conducted dry runs at the complex since four months ago.

The complex will be the main gateway for those entering and leaving the country from Johor Baru to Singapore.

“Part of the CIQ building has been operational for some time because agencies such as the Immigration Department, Customs and expressway concessionaire, Projek Lebuhraya Utara Selatan (PLUS) have been using the building,” Ahmad Zahri said this in reply to a question from Datuk Samsol Bari Jamali (BN-Semarang).
According to the original plans, 22 government and private agencies were expected to occupy the CIQ complex which has been named the Sultan Iskandar Complex.

Ahmad Zahri said trial exercises for traffic flow on the short-term access road, which connects the Johor causeway with the complex, had also been conducted. Continue Reading »

By EILEEN HEE

KUALA LUMPUR: Newcastle University will set up a RM100mil medical faculty in Nusajaya, Johor, via a joint venture with Iskandar Investment Bhd by 2011.

According to Dean of International Medical Education and CEO of Newcastle Medicine Malaysia Sdn Bhd Professor Reginald Jordon, students will be able to obtain a Newcastle University medical degree at about half the cost of doing so in Britain when Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia (NUMed) is set up in Iskandar Malaysia.

“At the moment, we have about 40 Malaysian students on our medical programme in Britain. A large number of those students is sponsored by Mara,” he told StarBiz.

With this five-year programme, the Malaysian Government would be able to fund more students for the medical degree at NUMed, Jordon said.

Set on a 13-acre site and comprising 16,000 sq m of academic space, the campus aims to produce 180 medical students per year by 2017. Continue Reading »

By ZAZALI MUSA

JOHOR BARU: Malaysian Resources Corp Bhd’s (MRCB) RM1.3bil Eastern Dispersal Link (EDL) highway project in Johor is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2011 and operational in early 2012, said chief development officer Shaharizuan Shafiei.

The 15km highway links the Pandan Interchange at the Tebrau Highway to the North-South Expressway and the new Johor Baru Customs, Immigration and Quarantine (CIQ) complex in Bukit Cagar.

Shaharizuan said preliminary construction works had started since August.

He said the main activity of the project now was land acquisition, which involved 150 lots of properties in a 28.32ha site within the designated development area.

“As of now, we have acquired between 30% and 35% of the total land area and hopefully the land acquisition will finish by June 2009,” Shaharizuan said on Sunday at a company event.

He said the RM228mil compensation to the landowners would be borne by MRCB while the construction cost was estimated at RM670mil. Continue Reading »

By ANGIE NG

WITH a number of lifestyle residential projects in its stable, IJM Land Bhd can look forward to riding out the current soft property market by focusing on its niche projects in Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Johor Baru.

For the financial year ending March 31, 2009 (FY09), the company expects to maintain sales at around RM800mil to RM900mil, especially from new project launches in Penang and Johor Baru, and ongoing developments in Kuala Lumpur and the Klang Valley.

Sales hit RM1bil for FY08.

Unless the market takes a turn for the worse, IJM Land is looking at 20 new project launches worth a total gross development value (GDV) of close to RM1bil over the next 12 months.

Managing director Datuk Soam Heng Choon said the market slowdown had affected mainly the mass market and lower product segments while the medium-high to high-end sector was still showing potential.

“We will focus on medium, medium-high and high-end products that are priced from RM300,000 to RM7.2mil a unit in good locations,” Soam said. Continue Reading »

LAUNCHED by the Sultan of Johor Sultan Iskandar Shah on Nov 4, 2006, the Iskandar Development Region was, in a rebranding exercise earlier this year, renamed “Iskandar Malaysia”.
The region was promoted by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as the cornerstone of Malaysia’s economic development.

The plan was to transform the area, which was already served by three seaports and an airport, into a business haven with high-tech clusters.

In Abdullah’s own words, the vision was to make the region, which is an an area three times the size of Singapore, into a “new international address for business, investment, leisure and culture, showcasing all that Malaysia can be”.

The developments planned include a cyber city, a logistical hub and major financial, tourist, medical and educational centres.
Iskandar Malaysia is targeted to create some 800,000 jobs over the next 20 years which will help raise the per capita income of Johor to RM115,000 by 2025.

To boost tourism in Iskandar Malaysia, two free access zones (FAZs) have been planned to provide visitors passport-free access to enjoy world-class entertainment and lifestyle facilities.

NST-9 November 2008