The downtown skyline in Singapore will see another addition once the S$3 billion South Beach project – a mega mixed development at Beach Road – is up and running over the next year.
The project’s developers City Developments and IOI Group have secured leases for 80 per cent of the office space, and its first corporate tenant will move in early next year.
Office space comprises about 30 per cent of the 1.65 million square feet development, with gross rents ranging from S$9 to S$12 per square foot per month. The tenants are from sectors such as financial services, IT, business consulting and fast-moving consumer goods.
Analysts Channel NewsAsia spoke to said the occupancy rate shows that South Beach is viewed as a strong alternative to office spaces in Raffles Place and Marina Bay. Chesterton Singapore’s managing director Donald Han said that there are also other factors which contributed to the high occupancy rate, such as the project being “the only prominent office to be completed in the next two years.”
The project also houses a 654-room designer hotel, around 37,000 square feet of retail space and a private club. In addition, there will be 190 luxury residences – with developers saying that they are considering “all possibilities”, including renting the units out. Its developers are not in a hurry to sell the units as the site is not affected by Qualifying Certificate rules, which require all units to be sold within two years of completion.
The site was acquired for about S$1.69 billion from the Urban Redevelopment Authority in 2007.
Mr Aloysius Lee, CEO of the South Beach Consortium, said: “You know the situation is not very good for the high-end market at this time due to various reasons. But we are very confident that it will recover very soon. So we have plans for all options, and at the right time, we will launch the product.”
Source : Channel NewsAsia – 18 Dec 2014