1st Transitional Office Block Ready In Sept

Source : The Business Times, February 1, 2008

BY September, Singapore's first transitional office building will be ready for its tenant, Prudential Assurance Company Singapore, said the project's developer yesterday.

Kop Capital, which is jointly developing the upcoming Scotts Spazio with partners Hwa Hong Group and Dubai Investment Group, said that the project would cost about $75 million - including the land cost of $37 million. Ground breaking for the four-storey development, next to Newton MRT station, was held yesterday.

Prudential, which has leased the building for 14 years, will be paying $6.50 per square foot a month. The site was sold by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) in August 2007 with a 15-year lease. The building will have 150,000 sq ft of space, Prudential said.

The URA started releasing transitional office sites last year to help ease the supply crunch for space in the office sector.

The Scotts Road site was the first to be offered and it attracted a whopping 11 bids when the maiden tender closed, with the highest offer of $37 million put in by Kop Capital and its partners.

Prudential chief executive Philip Seah said that the company would relocate some 2,500 of its staff, mostly from its current offices in Fuji Xerox Building and Bugis Junction, where its leases are ending.

'Consistent with our image of prominence, we were looking for a strategic location to relocate two of our existing agency centres,' Mr Seah said. 'The first transitional office site at Scotts Road proved to be ideal.'

The rent at Scotts Spazio is about half of what the company could potentially pay were it to stay on at Fuji Xerox and Bugis Junction, Mr Seah said.