The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 2016–2025
Hsinchu's Jingpin City mall closed after 8 years, defaulting on NT$6M owed to the city
The BOT mall in front of Hsinchu station lost its tenants to Big City, went dark in 2024, then skipped the NT$6 million royalty it owed the city.
J.Piin 晶品城購物廣場 (晶品開發實業) · 2024-03-15
What happened
Jingpin City (晶品城) was Hsinchu's first BOT shopping mall — a multi-storey car park tower with a mall bolted on, built on the prime spot directly in front of the railway station. It opened in October 2016 with about 4,400 ping of retail and a tenant list to match the location: Starbucks, Pizza Napoli, Poya, Nippon Honpo and a little-mango hotpot chain.
The retail district had already moved to Big City (巨城), a far larger mall a few minutes away, and the compact tower format could not hold floor traffic. Tenants were given notice to leave by January 2024; on 15 March 2024 the mall went dark. The operator first promised a conversion to long-term care, then, a year later, re-applied to run the building as a mall again.
While the building sat empty — council members called it a 'mosquito hall' — the operator never paid the fixed royalty it owed the city under the BOT contract. In June 2025 the transport bureau confirmed the NT$6 million was unpaid and began charging the NT$20,000-a-day penalty the contract allowed.
Why it happened
- The format was obsolete before it opened: a small mall inside a car-park tower could not compete with Big City, and the district had already moved there.
- Closure was treated as a pause, not a loss: the building sat empty for more than a year while the promised long-term-care conversion produced nothing and the operator re-filed to run a mall.
- A BOT revenue model assumed the station-front crowds would keep shopping; when they did not, the royalty that funded the city's stake went unpaid.
The lesson
A mall's format follows the district, not the site. A small tower mall where retail was moving to a bigger rival never earned the traffic its royalty assumed — the empty building cost either way.
Aftermath
Hsinchu council member Lin Yen-fu (林彥甫) used the Jingpin City building as the emblem of a declining old district, and the transport bureau's confirmation of the unpaid NT$6 million royalty and daily penalties made it a local cautionary tale about station-front BOT bets. The operator's promise to convert the building to long-term care never materialised, and its later bid to reopen as a mall left the city's partner in default on the very contract that built the site.
Sources
- TVBS — 台灣百貨公司「撤櫃歇業」!爆欠債600萬 市府證實了, 2025-06-12
- 自由時報 — 竹市晶品城爆欠600萬租金、權利金 林彥甫轟市府放任不管, 2025-06-12
- 數位時代 — 新竹晶品城3/15熄燈!巨城卻能打下百億營收，差別在哪？
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