Vivo vivo

I went to Vivocity yesterday. It wasn't really planned but F and her husband were visiting from the US and M and I were gonna meet up with them but rather late at night, so we had to eat and do something first. Vivocity has a direct bus from my office, so we decided to check it out.

The first thing that hits you when you get out of the harbourfront mrt underpass is that there are 2 gigantic foodcourts right in front of you! One kopitiam and one banquet. They are right next to each other but there are some barriers to keep people from moving between them, which we thought was quite weird. Until I realised that one is Halal and the other is not, make a guess which is which....

The rest of vivocity is really a bummer. More than half the shops aren't open yet, so much for the grand opening. Outside, the concrete for the sidewalks have not been cast, and my visitors who passed by the place earlier in the day thought it was a construction site. There was all this hype about new stores that you cant find anywhere else in Singapore, and the management said they didn't want to reveal what these were before opening day except that the first ever Gap store is here. Guess what? You guessed it, Gap is the ONLY new store in this mall! Everything else is "been there, seen that". And the Gap store is half the size of the one in Berkeley (not as if Berkeley is a very big town)!

Probably the only consolation is there is a Esprit (edc) outlet which has menswear. There are only 2 others that I know of (Raffles city and orchard). The designs at each one of the outlets are completely different. I suspect from different countries since the Espirit label is designed all over the world? The price tag was pretty steep though, 80 bucks for a short sleeve shirt. Shouldn't they have opening sales? I didn't see anyone in the store.

Really the only place which seems to be generating revenue is the foodcourt. Theres another food court on the top floor too but we didn't have time to go up there. Alongside the largest GV I suppose. Everywhere else there are people walking around, but not really purchasing anything. I suppose that's because there's nothing really new in Vivocity.

Overall: Thumbs down, been there, seen that......