Big changes are happening all around Big C in Ubon thanks to the “Ubon Square” (อุบลสแควร์) development directly South of the store. All the restaurants that used to be there have been moved to the East side of Big C and all the stores on the West side (gold, computer and cell phone shops) are almost completely demolished. The map below is an overlay of the construction site on Google Earth.
The development will be an open air strip mall with a food court, children’s play area and other restaurants. It’s scheduled to be completed on December 15, 2012 and at the rate they’ve been building, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were done sooner. I visited their office and had a flip through the construction plans. The only restaurants that seems to be confirmed are a 24 hour McDonalds which has it’s own separate store, but I also saw written notes about yet another KFC, MK and Japanese restaurant in the same facility together. There is also a picture of a Sizzler on one page. There are rumors of a Starbucks but I haven’t found confirmation of that yet. The McDonalds is being built on the far right of the picture below.
I rode my motorcycle through the construction site and what they’ve done so far matches the designs. I’ll post more info and try to get more confirmation on stores and restaurants when the project manager calls me back. Amazing how fast Ubon is growing. There are new housing developments all over the place, Sunee is wrapping up it’s expansion, Central is on the way and now this.
Below are some photos I took but if you want to see the official builder’s web site, check out this page and there’s a Thai forum posting pictures here.
