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Pasir Panjang Village Centre to go

Posted on 14 Nov 2009 | Comments Off

CHANGE is coming to the Pasir Panjang Village area, home to a clutch of pubs, restaurants and shops.

The Village Centre, a four-storey building housing a Cold Storage supermarket and various shops ranging from a nail salon to a laundromat, will be pulled down and rebuilt as a condominium with shop spaces on the first floor and in its basement.

The tenants in the building have been given until April next year to move out.

A 30-space carpark and a bungalow sitting next to the building will also become part of the new five-storey development, which will be ready by 2013.

But the row of pubs and restaurants occupying the conserved shophouses next door will stay.

This change comes just as this sleepy hollow seems to be blossoming into a slightly busier suburban nook.

Mr C. K. Ching, chief executive of boutique property developer Hume Homes, which owns The Village Centre, said the tenants have to go in order for the place to be revitalised.

‘There will be a better concept, more variety and will really add to the environment. Now, the place is very quiet,’ he said.

Hume Homes bought the building from Ridge Investments for $23 million in June. A showroom launch for the condominium will be held in January, and the wrecking ball will start swinging in April.

The commercial space in the new development has already attracted interest from Starbucks, while Cold Storage has also expressed interest in moving back in.

The building – at the junction of South Buona Vista and Pasir Panjang roads – was a quiet spot only two years ago.

But tenants have since moved in, and brought with them customers in search of food and a tipple, groceries and other services, though the buzz is nowhere near that of Holland Village.

The change has ruffled a few feathers.

Nail salon owner Doreen Tan, 35, said she signed a two-year lease for her second-floor shop, Vois, only in May, and had sunk $20,000 into renovations.

‘When we got the news, it was such a big blow to us,’ she said of the termination letter, which came last month.

Some residents also dread the loss of the area’s only commercial development.

Mrs Davi Beschizza, an artist in her 40s, and a mother of one, who lives in a condominium a 10-minute walk from The Village Centre, said: ‘It’s going to be very inconvenient. We don’t have any other supermarket near here. For the next three years, I will have to take a bus or taxi to Bukit Timah Plaza or West Coast Mall, both of which are quite far away.’

Source : Straits Times – 13 Nov 2009

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Posted in Office / Retail / Industrial

Tagged Hume Homes, Pasir Panjang Village, Retail Space, Singapore Retail, The Village Centre

High-spec space losing favour due to low office rents

Posted on 14 Nov 2009 | Comments Off

HIGH-spec industrial space has lost favour with tenants in the past few months. As office rents plunged, some companies have gone back to leasing commercial space, says Colliers International.

The move has, in turn, driven down rents for high-spec space. According to the property consultancy, the average monthly gross rent of high-spec space fell 14.1 per cent to $2.93 per square foot at end-September from $3.41 psf at end-March.

The lower rents reflect stiff competition for tenants, Colliers said, adding that some companies had taken advantage of the sharp drop in office rents to relocate to office premises.

This marks a reversal of the trend that started in 2007. As office rents soared on the back of a booming economy, more firms moved away from the central business district to cheaper high-spec industrial space.

But office rents have plummeted amid the economic slowdown. CB Richard Ellis said in September that monthly prime office rents averaged $7.50 psf in the third quarter, dropping 12.8 per cent from the previous quarter. They have fallen 53.4 per cent from their peak in Q3 last year.

Colliers said that on top of shrinking demand, a large supply of high-spec space is expected to appear next year, which has also contributed to falling rents.

In contrast, rents for some factories and warehouses have been relatively stable. Colliers said that from end-March to end-September, the average monthly gross rent of single-user factories in central Singapore stayed firm at $1.30 psf, while that of warehouses in eastern Singapore held up at $1.20 psf.

And on a positive note, Colliers said that there has been a noticeable pick-up in sales of industrial space. These involved mainly private investors, owner-occupiers and domestic companies.

While industrial space markets across the Asia-Pacific appear to be bottoming out, Colliers remains cautious in its outlook. It believes that these markets could stay subdued in the next 12 months, given that the global economy is still recovering and excess manufacturing capacity still exists.

Colliers research and advisory director Tay Huey Ying expects rents and capital values of factories and warehouses in Singapore to rise by up to 5 per cent in the next 12 months ‘on the back of the expected improvement in the economy and the manufacturing sector, as well as more optimistic business sentiment’.

Source : Business Times – 12 Nov 2009