i12 Katong — what does this name mean?
I live near a shopping centre called i12 Katong. Everyone calls it “Katong 112”.
The Katong part is obvious: that is the name of our neighbourhood. But what is “i12”?
The old sign said “I12”, and everyone read it as “112”. That made sense because the address is 112 East Coast Road. Then the sign changed to a lowercase “i12”, and it became a mystery.
Someone recently offered me a wonderfully implausible explanation: perhaps “i12 Katong” should be read as “I want to Katong”. I could not find that claim in the mall’s official materials. What can be verified is simpler: the address is 112 East Coast Road, and many people still call the mall “112 Katong”.
The building opened in 1983 as Katong People’s Complex and was widely nicknamed the “prison with pipes”.
A woman was shot there in 1994, and the facade was revamped when it became Katong Mall in 1995. Stories linking the pipes, the shooting and bad feng shui belong to neighbourhood lore rather than something I can verify. The current mall was relaunched as i12 Katong in 2011 and describes itself as “The Heart of Katong”.
How do you read i12?
Load responses to answer this question.
Tell me your story
Replies are reviewed before they appear. No account needed.
Loading responses sets a necessary browser cookie to prevent duplicate votes. You can change or remove your answer. Votes are informal, not a representative survey. How responses work · Original discussion ↗
