Food and lifestyle mall at Tanjong Pagar Centre launched

Come mid-2016, the Tanjong Pagar Centre will be the tallest building in Singapore, towering over the Central Business District at 290 metres.

Developer GuocoLand Group launched the office and retail components of the project on Wednesday (Feb 4). The integrated mixed-use development will have six storeys of F&B and lifestyle offerings and public spaces for recreational and community activities.

Apart from shaping the urban landscape, its 100,000 square-foot Food and Lifestyle Mall is expected to inject vibrancy into the Tanjong Pagar district.

“If you take away the gym, it would be around 70 per cent F&B. We see a lot of potential for F&B to do well in the CBD,” said Cheng Hsing Yao, managing director of GuocoLand Singapore. “During the weekends, we are also noticing that among our neighbours and the shophouses, heritage buildings, there are destination restaurants, districts like Duxton, Tras Street, they are doing very well, they are attracting weekend crowd so we are going to build upon the success of the district.”

The project will have a 150,000 square-foot Urban Park, which can be used for a range of activities, such as a food festival.

The biggest component of Tanjong Pagar Centre is its office building, also called Guoco Tower. It offers 890,000 square feet of Grade A office space.

Leasing agent JLL said potential tenants could come from the wealth management, business services or technology sectors.

Mr Christopher Fossick, managing director for Singapore and Southeast Asia at JLL, said: “We are working very closely with our offices on the west coast of America – San Francisco where a lot of technology companies are headquartered, also Los Angeles and other parts of the world, London for instance, which is a big financial-tech centre, financial technology, and we are working with companies that have expansion plans to come into the region.”

GuocoLand said it is unable to reveal lease commitments or the rental rates for now.

Guoco Tower is among about 4 million square feet of new office space that would enter the market in the next four years, according to JLL.

Most of the new office buildings, however, are expected to be completed in 2016 and 2017 – prompting caution from some market watchers regarding an imbalance in demand and supply of office space. To this point, GuocoLand said it is not worried and believes there is “equilibrium” in demand and supply based on a net annual absorption rate of 1 million square feet.

But according to JLL, prime office rents in the CBD currently range from S$10.60 to S$12.90 per square foot per month. Meanwhile, consultancy Chestertons put rents at the Tanjong Pagar area at around S$10 psf. It said the new project is one of several that will spur renewal in the area.

Mr Donald Han, managing director at Chestertons, said: “You have a few other interesting co-catalysts that will complete within the 2016-17 period. One of them is the OUE downtown, where you will see about 180,000 square feet of retail. Recently the Perennial Real Estate and their consortium of partners have bought AXA tower. You are going to see an interesting repositioning of AXA in particular, perhaps a revitalisation of the retail component. Plus you have V on Shenton and Eon Shenton that’s also completing all within the next two and a half years.

“You will see a complete makeover, urban renewal of sorts transpiring in the Tanjong Pagar area.”

Other components of Tanjong Pagar Centre include a five-star hotel and 181 units of luxury apartments.

Source : Channel NewsAsia – 4 Jan 2015

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