The shopping centre was completed in October 1970, while the residential block, in 1973. Occupying 1.0 hectare in the heart of Chinatown, the People's Park Complex was the largest shopping complex in the shopping commercial belt along Eu Tong Sen Street and New Bridge Road.
Located at the foot of Pearl's Hill, the site where the People's Park Complex currently stands was an open public park.
The People's Park Complex was a commercial housing project undertaken by the newly formed Urban Renewal Department of the Housing and Development Board's Sale of Sites programme. The project was the subject of the programme's first sale in 1967.
With a height of 103 metres (338 feet), the 31-storey People's Park Complex building was the first shopping centre of its kind in Southeast Asia and set the pattern for later retail developments in Singapore.