Daning International Commercial Plaza: A Plot of Land "Grabbed Back"

Basic information

The protagonist of this piece is not, in fact, the shopping centre. It is a plot of land — its fate took a turn, and Zhabei's commerce turned with it.

First, "the wrong side of the tracks"

Around 2000, Shanghai people's impression of Zhabei's commerce was, to put it politely, "a weak base".

— To put it bluntly, it was the two phrases of the time: "the wrong side of the tracks" and "the bare-armed district".

The presentable commerce Zhabei had then was the station-front trade around the "new station" and Bunye Cheng. But station-front trade is "passing trade": travellers come and go, and its pull on the district's commerce as a whole, in the words of the people in charge at the time, was — "judged from today's perspective, less than ideal."

The centre and north of Zhabei were a great blank space with no modern commerce.

Spring 2002: a whole-district map spread out

The change began with one detail.

In early 2002 the district's commerce committee carried out a carpet survey of the district's commercial layout, putting every plot on the map. When they reached the junction of Gonghexin Road and Daning Road, they stopped —

"We found that a walled-off empty lot at the junction of Gonghexin Road and Daning Road was very well suited to forming a regional commercial centre."

The conditions here were excellent: on the north–south elevated road, in the middle of Zhabei, close to both Hongkou and Putuo, with enough footfall. — All it lacked was a modern commercial complex.

But a closer look chilled them to the bone: this plot (about 93 mu) already had a destination — it was zoned for commercial and residential development, 70% housing and 30% commerce, jointly developed by three enterprises, with every approval already granted and the surveyors and pile drivers already on site.

The zoning had been settled, the red lines drawn. Anyone else might have heaved a sigh and turned the page. But this page was not turned.

"Snatching food from the tiger's mouth"

The turning point came dramatically.

One day in April 2002, the recently appointed district head Ding Xuexiang was inspecting standardised food markets. When the inspection ended, the head of the commerce committee "stopped" the district head and asked him to take a look at the plot on the spot — a look that had not been on the district head's schedule.

"I said: 'If this plot is only used for property development, that would be "using a great talent for a small job", too much of a waste. I hope the leadership can reconsider what this plot is used for.'"

The district head heard the report out and gave one sentence:

"This question deserves a proper study; I'd like your commerce committee to take the lead in studying it and come up with a plan, and every department to give its support."

It was that sentence that stopped the construction.

What followed was half a year of "letting the evidence speak": the district brought in two international consultancies, AC Nielsen and CBRE, to carry out a market survey and a feasibility study respectively — answering one question by quantitative standards: should this plot really be given over entirely to commerce?

The report's conclusion: developing it wholly for commerce was the greatest realisation of the plot's value. The district party secretary Yao Haitong then chaired a special meeting on the "central commercial and cultural centre", and the district's four leading bodies unanimously decided: here, a commercial centre.

Years later, a person who lived through it summed up the episode in four words:

"What we were doing was 'snatching food from the tiger's mouth' — a piece of meat was in someone else's mouth, and we took it away by main force."

The "three-way contest" over 93 mu

To change the plot back on the drawings was easy; to actually get the land in hand was hard.

The 93 mu were held by three organisations: Aipu Flavour, the Shanghai Urban Construction Group and Pengpu Town. Not one was willing to give it up — "they would rather go to court." The negotiations went on for nearly a year:

• with Aipu Flavour: a cash compensation was agreed;
• with Shanghai Urban Construction: they "did not want money, but land of an equivalent area and location on which to build property" — so the district government swapped in a similar plot as compensation, which is today's "Youhe Jiayuan";
• with Pengpu Town: settled through negotiation, item by item.

A year of tug-of-war bought a clean plot. Only with the land in hand did everything that followed become possible.

Choosing a "different" scheme

The land was in hand; to whom should it go? The field of contenders was quite something: Bailian, Shangshi, China Resources, Changfeng (the developer of the Dragon Dream), Taiwan's Wei-Ching, France's Carrefour …

On 23 November 2002 the district held a scheme appraisal meeting. The winner, however, was a company then "not at all famous" — Hong Kong Fulusite (the Chongbang Group).

Where did it win? On being different.

At the time the craze across the country was the "big box" — the enclosed shopping centre. The scheme Chongbang submitted was quite another picture: open blocks, connected plazas, walkable paths — its concept was "Life Hub @ Daning", and its layout learned from the grain of the old Chinese city of Shanghai.

"By linking the different buildings with slow-traffic walkways, the layout is open and the functions are gathered together, and it really is unlike the 'big boxes' we had seen before. There was no precedent for a design like this in China then."

People later summed it up: "a modern rendering of the old Chinese city of Shanghai" — 15 buildings, 11 plazas and courtyards of different sizes, and about 2 kilometres of pedestrian streets, without a single big door to shut you in — only streets you can walk into.

There was one more detail that was pulled back and forth: the district insisted on including a high-grade hotel, which the developer did not want to add at first. — "Afterwards, the hotel operated very well, and it was a win-win."

Eighteen months, working day and night

In October 2004 the project broke ground.

The eighteen months that followed were eighteen months of "a new look every month, a great change every three". Interestingly, things were shifting round about during the construction: Metro Line 1 opened, and the multimedia valley opposite the park got under way — before this plot had even opened its doors, its value and its draw were already rising.

Chongbang did something very "old-fashioned" and rather moving: it compiled a book called The Great Transformation, shot a video, wrote a song and built a showroom — laying out honestly, for people to see, what this place would become.

More than 150 businesses cast a vote of confidence: 86% of them settling in Zhabei for the first time, and 15% coming to China for the first time — Europe's C&A and Korea's CGV cinema both walked into Zhabei from this plot.

On 22 October 2006, Daning International Commercial Plaza was completed.

What came after

What can one commercial centre change? Daning's answer is a whole "Daning quarter":

• the moment it appeared it became a new highlight of leisure and entertainment spending in north Shanghai;
• it brought the centre of the former Zhabei into the view of well-known developers — Jiuguang, Baohua and others came one after another, and the New Jing'an Sports Centre was completed and opened too;
• in 2014 "Daning" was named in a new round of Shanghai municipal-level retail districts; in 2017 its growth rate ranked first among the municipal-level retail districts of the central city.

And Chongbang, which made Daning International, made its name on this project too, and went on to Jinqiao International, Sinan Mansions and Jiatinghui — but Zhabei people remember only its first work, and that was in Daning.

The summary of someone who was there is plain and accurate:

"More than ten years on, Daning International Commercial Plaza is still very fashionable. So innovation matters — copy other things and it may not work."

What to see here today

• take a stroll round a shopping centre that "isn't like a shopping centre": don't rush to find the shops — first walk a circuit of the open-air blocks, count the plazas and courtyards, and feel what a "shopping centre without a big door" is like;
• notice two details: the stepped heights of the buildings ("high outside, low inside"), and the overhanging eaves along the streets — designed specially for people shopping in the rain, a very solid kindness;
• how to read it alongside others: it forms the "Daning trio" with Shanghai Circus World and Daning Lingshi Park — culture first, then ecology, then commerce, and that order is the very essence of the development history of Daning Road Subdistrict;
• catch a show: in recent years the Shanghai International Arts Festival, the float parade of the tourism festival and the cultural festivals of many countries have all stopped here — its English name "Life Hub" means, literally, "a hub of life".

Connections

• Sub-district：Daning Road Subdistrict
• See also：Xinxin Department Store, Shanghai Circus World, Daning Lingshi Park, Daning Road Subdistrict

Sources: the approval of the project (2002), the start of work (October 2004), its completion (22 October 2006), the address (1878–2008 Gonghexin Road), the site of about 93 mu, "a walled-off empty lot at the junction of Gonghexin Road and Daning Road", "snatching food from the tiger's mouth", the district head Ding Xuexiang's inspection and the "using a great talent for a small job" report, the studies by the two consultancies AC Nielsen and CBRE, the special meeting chaired by the district party secretary Yao Haitong, the three-way purchase of the 93-mu plot (cash compensation for Aipu Flavour, and the swapped plot for Shanghai Urban Construction, today's "Youhe Jiayuan"), the scheme appraisal meeting of 23 November 2002, the final choice of Hong Kong Fulusite (the Chongbang Group), the "Life Hub @ Daning" concept and the open-block layout, "a modern rendering of the old Chinese city of Shanghai", the decision-making over the high-grade hotel, the book The Great Transformation and its promotion, "86% settling in Zhabei for the first time and 15% coming to China for the first time", C&A and CGV, the eighteen months of construction and "a new look every month, a great change every three", and such details as the project's setting off the formation of the Daning quarter and a municipal-level retail district and the Chongbang Group's later projects (Jinqiao International, Sinan Mansions, Jiatinghui) follow "Shanghai Jing'an"'s Looking Back over 40 Years ‖ Building a Municipal-Level Retail District, Helping the Centre Rise — the Construction of Daning International Commercial Plaza (as told by Li Haibo, former director of the Zhabei District commerce committee, written up by Wang Ying and Yang Qingqing, 2018, Grade B); the opening date and the project outline follow the Baidu Baike entry "Shanghai Daning International Plaza" and the Wikipedia entry "Daning International Commercial Plaza" (Grade C, cross-checked against several sources); the details "a modern rendering of the old Chinese city", "more than 150 businesses cast a vote of confidence" and "trial opening in June 2006" follow the Economic Daily report of 2011, "Daning International: A Modern Rendering of the Old Chinese City of Shanghai" (Grade B); that its sub-district is Daning Road Subdistrict, and its address (1878–2008 Gonghexin Road), follow the Daning Road Subdistrict page of the Jing'an District People's Government of Shanghai (Grade B). Operating figures (floor area, number of brands, parking spaces and so on) are omitted here on the "memory-recall" principle. The full bibliography is in Appendix 4.