Riviera Plaza is an abandoned shopping mall located in Tsuen Wan District, Hong Kong. The property was developed by Tsuen Wan Properties Co., Ltd. and designed by Wang Dong Architects. The entire shopping mall has 9 floors (G/F and 1-8 floors) and 2 basements, with a total floor area of 242,685 square feet and 171 parking spaces.
The mall opened in November 1990, but after the Asian financial crisis in 1997, a lot of shops closed down and it never returned to its former glory. It also did not boast a location as convenient as other shopping centres. More popular modern malls also cropped up in the city, which this one paled to in comparison. In addition, since it was located near a cemetery, there were rumours of ghosts for many years, and the building itself became a dead mall in 2013, when it was closed after it was sold for HK$508 million.
In its prime, this Riviera Plaza Shopping Mall was one of the biggest in the New Territories. During it’s heyday it boasted a cinema, a massive Wing On department store, an ice rink, McDonald’s, PARKnSHOP and more. It also boasted a popular ice rink with top coaches and talented students who often took part in international competitions. It was the fifth ever ice rink to open in Hong Kong and people travelled from all around the territory to visit.
The opening year was very crowded. However, due to the relatively inconvenient traffic in Tsuen Wan city center, and there is no free shuttle bus route to and from the city center to attract customers, shopping mall had only three regular bus routes. During the Asian financial crisis in 1997, many merchants left the building due to the downturn in the market, resulting in a large number of empty shopping malls. The 7th to 8th floors were permanently closed around 2008.
Since 2013 it has been used as a film set for films such as Raging Fire (怒火), Flying Tiger III (飛虎3壯志英雄) and most recently, in an apocalyptic music video by Keung To from the boy band Mirror, which the city is compulsively obsessed with at the moment. Various plans have been floated for the site since its closure, but none of these have come to materialise.
A big thank you to Caroline Line, who captured these amazing photographs of the abandoned shopping mall in Hong Kong. Follow her facebook group and instagram page to see more of her photography work.
