KepLand To Redevelop Ocean Building

Source : The Business Times, October 9, 2007

KEPPEL Land will redevelop its Ocean Building and Ocean Towers office buildings into the new state-of-the-art Ocean Financial Centre (OFC), it said yesterday.

Towering: When completed in 2011, the Ocean Financial Centre will offer 850,000 sq ft of office space

When completed in 2011, the 43-storey OFC will offer some 850,000 sq ft of prime Grade A office space.

Since KepLand owns the land OFC will come up on, it will only have to fork out for the development costs. Construction is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2008.

Ocean Building, which is now being demolished, has some 402,000 sq ft of net lettable area (NLA); Ocean Tower has another 229,000 sq ft.

The new centre will be built on land cleared when Ocean Building is demolished, integrating with Ocean Towers' podium.

Once OFC comes up, Ocean Towers' office block - which is above the podium - will then be taken down, said Tan Swee Yiow, KepLand's director of Singapore commercial.

He said that tenants in Ocean Towers as well as past tenants in Ocean Building have shown interest in taking up space at the OFC.

Ocean Building's major tenants included financial companies Credit Suisse, Ernst & Young and HSBC, while big tenants at Ocean Towers included law firm Drew & Napier and DMG & Partners Securities.

'Ocean Financial Centre, with its commanding location in Raffles Place and the New Downtown, will be the preferred business address of major financial institutions and multi-national corporations,' said KepLand managing director Kevin Wong.

The development is smaller than two other comparable office developments nearby - the massive Marina Bay Financial Centre (MBFC) and One Raffles Quay (ORQ).

Two office towers in MBFC's first phase will add up to about 1.65 million sq ft of NLA. The office tower in the second phase is expected to offer another one million-plus sq ft of office space as well.

Similarly ORQ, which was completed last year, has slightly over 1.3 million sq ft of NLA.

Marketing for OFC will begin next year, Mr Tan said. The building is not likely to be injected into KepLand's listed trust K-Reit Asia until development is completed in 2011, Mr Tan added.

OFC is designed by world-renowned architectural firm Pelli Clarke Pelli, whose portfolio of commercial developments in major financial cities includes the World Financial Centre in Beijing and Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

The building will have some 'green' features, such as the largest solar panel system on a commercial building in Singapore and the first hybrid chilled water system on the island.

OFC will be the fourth building to rise at the same site following redevelopment. The first Ocean Building was built in 1864.