Development...at the price of Serenity?

Recently a new shopping cum business center was open in Bukit Jelutong. This business center is called De'Pangkin and located nearby the Birai area of BJ, about 1KM away from my home. Having stayed in BJ for about three years now, I found that this new business area a welcome development. You see, BJ is IMHO, is very quite and secluded from mainstream activities like shopping, even for simple grocery items. Yes, we do have a small convenient store near the Guthrie Community hall but its very small and a bit overpriced, to say the least. Most of our grocery shopping is done either at a Fresh Market store at TTDI Jaya or at Giant Hypermarket, and both of them are within 5KM from home, not quite as close as we want it to be especially when you have emergency visit from far-away relatives and your fridge is empty!



At the moment, there are only a few shop lots already being occupied. I saw at least 2 hardware stores already open, two 24-hour clinic, one student tuition center, one mini-market called Speedmart99 and soon to be open Indian Restaurant. So far, we have been to this mini-market several times to get some essential items and my observation is that the merchandise items are reasonably priced and worth the trips. In fact my other half told me that this mini-market is actually a franchise store as it other nearby branch is in the Taipan USJ.



I was also told that there is a plan to develop a bigger business center called 1st Jelutong sometimes in the future. Kinda remind me of One Utama. The location for this development was said to be near the BJ golf Driving range and will have Jaya Jusco as the anchor tenant. I think the pitch&putt golf course will be sacrifised to allow for this development, and frankly speaking I am not very happy as BJ will be deprived of so many hecters of luscious greens and serenity that have make BJ so peaceful and superb as a residential area.

On other development, part of the vacant plot adjacent to the large BJ soccer field is already under early construction stage for developing 'who knows what'. Again I was informed that Guthrie is planning to build a 'community' service area where fast food restaurant like McDonalds or others will be operating soon. This again is not a very encouraging news to me as this new so-called community store is only 50m from my house and is only blocked by a row of houses in front of our home. Nonetheless, this is the price of development and the only compensation for us from all of these, is hopefully that the value of our property will rise!

The following pics show the vacant field as it used to be and the construction workers site-office trailers already occupying it..




I am not so sure whether the serenity and peaceful atmosphere of BJ will still exist in the next 3-4 years with all this on-going development. I am very hopeful however that Guthrie in its quest to develop BJ as a prestiguous reseidential area to also be concerned on the most influential factor of why people like to live here...PEACE..and if this is no longer in existence..BJ will be another PJ sooner than we thought...