The Puteri Pacific Hotel in downtown Johor Bahru — long-seen as an iconic city hotel — has entered demolition/deconstruction as part of plans to clear the site for a new development project.
The building’s actual existence in the city is coming to an end, as evidenced by recent social media photos that show it being aggressively dismantled.
After decades of entertaining tourists, particularly those from neighboring Singapore, the 20-story hotel closed its doors in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before being sold, it was classed as a non-core or underperforming asset in Johor Corporation’s (JCorp) portfolio of hospitality properties.
According to reports from the previous year, the site was sold to a property group connected to well-known Malaysian developer Tan Sri Desmond Lim, making it ideal for redevelopment given its prime location close to City Square Shopping Mall, JB Sentral, the CIQ complex and the upcoming Bukit Chagar RTS Link.
The destruction indicates that the new owner is probably planning a new mixed-use or hospitality-related project, even though official redevelopment plans for the Puteri Pacific property itself have not yet been made public.
For a hotel that operated in the heart of Johor Bahru’s city center for almost thirty years, the demolition signifies the end of an era.
The site’s makeover is in line with Johor’s urban renewal and economic growth strategy given the impetus for redevelopment in the surrounding area, which includes integrated mixed-use developments and important infrastructure like the RTS Link.
