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Transformers eatery may fold on Russell Street as Optimus Prime bows to Hong Kong’s rent

  • The Ark restaurant pays about HK$1 million (US$128,000) a month in rent, according to property agents

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Transformers: The Ark restaurant at 38 Russell Street in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay district on July 10, 2024. Photo: Robert Ng
Cheryl Arcibal

Transformers: The Ark restaurant on Russell Street is set to close, as the media franchise behind Optimus Prime and his Autobots surrender to Hong Kong’s costly rental charges amid a consumption slump and intense competition.

The fast-food eatery, which opened for business at Soundwill Plaza in April 2023, serves premium hamburgers and pizzas with Autobot-imprinted buns and trays. Part of the 4,540-sq ft space over three floors in Causeway Bay is reserved for selling Transformers figurines and merchandise made by the toy companies Hasbro and Takara Tomy.

The Ark restaurant pays about HK$1 million (US$128,000) a month in rent, according to real estate agents, half of what the previous tenant Burberry paid before it succumbed in late 2021 to the economic slump during Hong Kong’s bout of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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“The space will be transformed into an empty [lot] soon,” said Oliver Tong, head of retail at JLL, which lists the property on its website. Another agent confirmed that Soundwill Plaza has notified him of the need for a new tenant soon, without providing a date.

A figure of the Optimus Prime and Transformers’ merchandise inside The Ark in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay district on July 10, 2024. Photo: Robert Ng
A figure of the Optimus Prime and Transformers’ merchandise inside The Ark in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay district on July 10, 2024. Photo: Robert Ng
The Ark operates along a retail strip that was the world’s most expensive commercial real estate as recently as six years ago, when landlords demanded up to US$2,671 per square foot in average annual rent, more than the Fifth Avenue in New York or the Champs Elysees in Paris. Burberry paid HK$8.6 million in monthly rent at Soundwill Plaza in 2015 at the height of Hong Kong’s retail boom.
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Since then, a cascade of factors combined to weigh on Hong Kong’s luxury retail sector. Mainland China scrapped an import tax on luxury goods in 2015, killing off a swathe of “daigou” professional buyers and arbitrageurs. Anti-government protests of 2019 and three years of the pandemic also suppressed luxury retails sales and rental charges, driving Causeway Bay out of Cushman & Wakefield’s list of the world’s 10 costliest shopping streets.
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