BANGKOK, March 4: A Thai court has ordered shopowners at Bangkok’s Suan Lum Night Bazaar to pack up and leave one of the city’s most popular tourist spots. The Crown Property Bureau, which owns the land on which the sprawling market of 3,000 shops, restaurants and a Thai puppet theatre site, said on Tuesday a court issued an order on Feb 13 for tenants to leave within 30 days.

Those who ignore the order to leave the site, at a major intersection close to the main business district, may face “seizure, arrest or imprisonment,” the CPB said in notice printed in Thai newspapers.

“It is the intention of Crown Property Bureau to comply with the court order and to carry out this order as stated,” said the agency, which manages the Thai royal family’s assets.

The large site — also next to Lumpini Park, the biggest in central Bangkok, and a subway station — is a prime piece of real estate in the city, home to 10 million people.

Last year, the CPB signed a long-term lease on a large chunk of the site with mall developer Central Pattana, which may build Bangkok’s tallest building as well a hotel and a shopping mall, according to Thai newspaper reports. Other developments, including an embassy row, were being considered as well.

However, the CPB had to first wrest control of Suan Lum back from a property company, P Con Development, which was granted a short-term lease on the site of a former military college in 2000. It opened the night bazaar a year later.

P Con refused to leave after the lease expired in 2004 and according to the CPB, ignored lease extensions intended to give the shopkeepers time to leave.

On Jan. 30, the Southern Bangkok Civil Court ruled that P Con’s lease had expired and it should quit the site.—Reuters