POV: Rivervale Plaza After School, Sengkang's First Mall

What the after-school run looked like

Off the LRT at Rumbia, up the escalator with the yellow-and-black stripes, past the KFC that was the whole reason you walked this way instead of straight home. Snacks were the 7-Eleven if you had $2, the FairPrice if you had more, and the food court if someone's mum was paying. Then the long way home across the void decks so the walk lasted longer.

Rivervale Plaza is a landed-estate-sized mall in an HDB town, which is the charm. The photos in our post are the ones every Sengkang kid recognises: the covered walkway with the planters, the red-and-white signage, the aerial shot from 2003 when the blocks around it were still new.

Why it still matters when Compass One is ten minutes away

Because Compass One is where you go now and Rivervale Plaza is where you went first. Every town has one: the mall that was there before the big one, that still has the same tenants, that you walk through on autopilot. Sengkang's is this. Punggol's is Punggol Plaza. Jurong's was JCube, which we wrote about in the Jurong edition.

It is still there, still 118 Rivervale Drive, still Rumbia LRT, still a KFC and a FairPrice. Go on a weekday afternoon at 2pm and the after-school run is still happening, just with a different batch of kids.

Next in the series: ORTO

The last slide promised Yishun's ORTO "before it shut down", and that piece exists: ORTO Yishun, what happened to the longkang fishing. Same series, same feeling.