Flurry of activity as One-North Residences nears TOP

The 427-unit One-North Residences, jointly developed by UOL Group, privately held sister company Kheng Leong and construction group, Low Kheng Huat, will be getting its temporary occupation permit (TOP) in the coming months.

Typical of most projects that are close to completion, transactions here have spiked up.The 99-year leasehold project was launched in March 2007, when the market was still red hot. As the first residential project to be launched within One-North, a master planned development with work- live-play components located near Buona Vista, it naturally set a new price benchmark for the area.

Two years ago, units were sold at an average price of $900 psf, with a number of units crossing the $1,000 psf mark, hitting a high of $1,238 psf. As at Dec 31, 2008, UOL reported that 99.3% of the units had been snapped up.

According to caveats lodged with URA Realis, three units ranging from 980 to 1,109 sq ft changed hands in the subsale market at $800,000 to $950,000. One owner of a 14th floor unit sold his 1,001 sq ft apartment for $860,256 or $859 psf in March. He had purchased the unit from the developer in December last year for $780,780 ($780 psf), hence making a handsome 10% gain in just a few months.

A seventh floor, 980 sq ft unit changed hands in the subsale market for $800,000 or $817 psf, which was 17.4% below the $969,052 ($989 psf) paid by the seller in April 2007. The third deal, a 1,001 sq ft ninth floor unit, changed hands in a subsale at $950,000 or $857 psf, slightly above the original purchase price of the seller of $915,098 or $825 psf.

Meanwhile, three neighbouring apartments on the fourth floor of the second block were put up for auction sale by Knight Frank on behalf of an owner in late February. Based on caveats lodged for the units, the owner had purchased all three studio apartments, from 570 to 614 sq ft, at $647,235 to $675,830. The purchase prices translate to an average of $1,055 to $1,159 psf. The opening prices for the three units at the auction were from $580,000 to $620,000. According to market sources, buyers were looking at prices closer to the $500,000 to $550,000 price range.

Rather than selling, the owner can lease the apartments when the project is completed, says Mary Sai, director of auction at Knight Frank. The market rent for studio apartments in the area is hovering around $2,500 a month, and based on the purchase price, rental yield works out to around 4.4% to 4.5%, she says.

Given the location, which is within walking distance of two MRT stations — One-North and Buona Vista — potential tenants are those working in One-North, Science Parks, National University Hospital and the National University of Singapore, she says.

For more info on layouts, plans, facilities …  of one-north Residences, pls login www.onenorth.biz.

Source : The Edge –  Apr 2009

JTC clears the air on planned lifestyle hub

I REFER to Mr Lester Lam’s Online Forum letter on Friday, “$19m church collection raises questions on nature of complex”. Mr Lam had shared similar concerns in a Forum letter on Sept 23 last year, “Concern over use of building”.

We assure him once again that we appreciate his concerns.

As we had previously informed Mr Lam in our published response (”One-North: No rental restrictions on venue”), the Civic, Cultural and Retail Complex (CCRC) will comprise a proposed 5,000-seat auditorium and a retail mall, to be operated on a neutral basis and open for rental to the public without any restriction. JTC announced the awarding of the development of the site to Rock Productions and CapitaLand in September 2007, following a public tender.

Rock Productions has provided a legal undertaking to JTC that the venue will be managed strictly on a commercial basis and will not be converted into a religious facility. IMG Artists, a prominent global performing arts management company, has been appointed by Rock Productions as the third party to market and manage the venue.

Any organisation or group, regardless of affiliation, can rent the venue with the necessary permits obtained from the relevant authorities.

The CCRC is intended to be a lifestyle hub within one-north and the Buona Vista-Queenstown region. It is envisaged that the CCRC will generate a wide range of attractions, food and beverage outlets, entertainment and amenities. This will create a vibrant social and cultural environment for the benefit of everyone within the vicinity, and not just for a select and exclusive group.

We would like to thank Mr Lam again for sharing his concerns with us.

Kelly Wee (Ms)
Director, Communications
JTC Corporation

Source : Straits Times –  Mar 2009

Life in a self-contained township

 

one-north aims to be a place where residents can work, live, learn and play seamlessly. CLARISSA Tan reports

 

IT’S Friday morning. Your alarm rings. You decide to swim a few laps, so you head for the rooftop pool. Then you stroll to work, which takes only a few minutes. Throughout the day, you rub shoulders with academics, media types, a few artists.

 

Later you want to welcome the weekend with a bang. A host of restaurants and bars are just a short walk or an MRT stop away. And while your workplace is an impressive, futuristic building, you can opt to dine in a cosy colonial setting.

 

Living in one-north will help you enjoy this kind of lifestyle, according to some property developers and consultants. The 200-hectare area around Buona Vista, which includes scientific research centre Biopolis and media hub Fusionoplis, aims to be a place where residents can ‘work, live, learn and play’ seamlessly.

 

one-north’s ’self-contained township’ concept and proximity to a research-and-development hub, the Science Park and education campuses are a draw for researchers, academics and professionals, says Ku Swee Yong, director of marketing and business development at property consultant Savills Singapore.

 

‘Singapore has just begun to reap the benefits of R&D in the pure sciences,’ he says. ‘one-north is expected to contribute the lion’s share in the commercialisation value of these efforts’.

 

Two residential projects are under construction at one-north – one-north Residences and The Rochester.

 

The Rochester, going by the job-home-leisure concept, is a mixed development that will comprise a condominium, a business hotel and a mall.

 

The cluster will have ‘unparalleled accessibility,’ says Jackson Yap, group managing director and chief executive of developer United Engineers.

 

‘There’s the East-West MRT line a five-minute walk away at Buona Vista station and the Circle Line to be running by 2011. It is also a short drive to Orchard Road and walking distance to Holland Village.’

 

The Rochester Condominium will have 366 units. Besides being near the sleek towers of Biopolis and Fusionopolis, it will be flanked by the lush Rochester Park, a green belt with colonial black-and-white bungalows that have been leased to food-and-beverage outlets.

 

‘It enjoys all the amenities of a mature residential estate with the greenery of the Rochester Hill in the background,’ says Mr Yap.

 

The Rochester Mall will be 100,000 sq ft and the business hotel, called Park Avenue Suites @ The Rochester, will have 350 rooms.

 

‘Apart from serving business travellers to one-north, the hotel will cater to medical tourists, with the National University Hospital and Gleneagles in the vicinity,’ Mr Yap says.

 

It will also attract ‘edu-tourists’ on short-term post-graduate courses at the nearby INSEAD business school and the National University of Singapore, he adds.

 

The entire project should be completed by 2011.

 

one north Residences , developed by Vista Development, will have about 400 residential units and 20 street retail units. Its design concept leans towards glass and steel, with blocks connected by sky bridges, and fits in with the area’s master plan to create a ‘fenceless’ community.

 

‘Because there is a limited supply of residential projects there, demand for housing will be extremely great from expatriates who work there,’ says Emily Eng, associate director of the residential department of Knight Frank, the project’s marketing consultant and agent.

 

‘People who buy see the potential of the hub. After all, the government has committed to spend $15 billion to develop this city within the city.’

 

Savills’ Mr Ku says a development like one-north Residences will ‘allow like-minded experts and professionals to get together, mingle and socialise within a short walk of their home.’

 

Such is the concern for seamless interconnectivity that if you’re the sort who prefers to roll out of bed and into the office, you can opt to live in the very building where you work.

 

Fusionopolis, a twin-tower, 24-floor skyscraper dedicated to ‘infocomms’ or media and IT-related businesses, will house 50 serviced apartments. These units will have access to a rooftop pool, a clubhouse and skygardens – as well as five floors of entertainment and retail outlets including a supermarket, restaurants, a bookstore and a food court.

 

While one-north may look scientific, high-tech and top-speed at first glance, it also has a more laidback and historical side. Nestled in a green enclave is the Wessex Estate, a close-knit cluster of black-and-white houses and apartments built by the British in the 1940s.

 

While the various blocks of the Biopolis complex are given names such as Neuros, Genome and Chromos, the apartment buildings of Wessex Estate bear names that recall another time – Waterloo, Somme, Lucknow, Pegu.

 

And unlike the colonial district at Rochester Park, which now features restaurants and bars, the Wessex Estate is still very much residential and has a strong neighbourhood feel. The aim is to foster it as a home for artists, teachers, writers and actors. A few of the apartment blocks have been converted into work lofts for people involved in the creative and fine arts.

 

The Wessex Estate has always had interconnectivity of its own. For decades, its inhabitants could head down to the nearby Colbar (short for Colonial Bar), where pickled onions and fish-and-chips are on the menu.

 

The Colbar still exists and is as popular as ever, but recently it has been joined by two new restaurants, a cafe and a cocktail bar – all of them forming an area called the Village Square.

 

At sundown, when you chug your beer at the square, perhaps you will see the twinkling lights of the hovering skyscrapers.

 

For more info on buying or renting homes around one-north such as One north Residences or One Rochester, contact us at 65 62727 800 or login : www.onenorth.biz

 

 

Source: Business Times

 

 

Church collects $19m in one day for lifestyle hub

MEMBERS of the New Creation Church and their friends donated an average of $864 each one Sunday last month, netting the church a whopping $19 million for its upcoming multimillion-dollar lifestyle hub in Buona Vista.

The sum is believed to be the largest ever collected in Singapore in one single day and comes at a time when charities say donations are dipping, as the recession worsens and people are keeping their hands firmly in their pockets.

This, however, is not the first time the New Creation Church, an independent church led by Senior Pastor Joseph Prince, has collected such a staggering sum in one day. One Sunday in April last year, the church collected about $18 million during its first ‘Miracle Seed Sunday’.

The church declined to be interviewed, saying its affairs were ‘a personal expression of worship’.

But The Straits Times understands that ‘Miracle Seed Sunday’ is a day when the church’s members ’sow a seed, expecting miracles’.

Mr Prince declared during his sermons early last month that Feb 15 would be a ‘Miracle Seed Sunday’.

A record 22,000 people, including members and their friends, showed up on Feb15 for the church services and pledged $19 million. The proceeds are to go to the church’s new cultural and entertainment complex being developed by its business arm, Rock Productions.

Last September, Rock Productions told The Straits Times it had raised about a third of the $500 million it needed to build the complex. It is partnering property giant CapitaLand to build the close to $1 billion project, envisioned as a ‘futuristic complex with restaurants, shops and a 5,000-seat theatre’.

CapitaLand will own and manage the complex’s retail and entertainment zone. Rock Productions will own and manage the civic and cultural zone, which will house the 5,000-seat theatre to be used for the New Creation Church’s Sunday services.

Church members interviewed said they were happy to donate to the new complex. Bank executive Marcus Wong, 28, said: ‘It’s not compulsory. Whoever has the heart and wants to give can come forward to give. The building is for God, so we see it as an offering.’

When asked whether she thought the money should go to helping the poor instead of constructing a building, another church member, a businesswoman who declined to be named, replied: ‘I believe with the new building, we are giving to the kingdom of God, and God will be able to bless more people.’

The New Creation Church is one of the fastest- growing churches in Singapore. It was founded here in 1984 by a group of young Christians and has grown from 25 believers to more than 18,000 members today. It had an income of $55.4 million during its last financial year.

Source : Straits Times – Mar 2009

Creative buzz at Mediapolis

IMAGINE flashing billboards, colourful media screens, film shootings on the streets and red carpet activities galore. This is not downtown Manhattan nor Tokyo. Come 2020, Singapore’s very own Mediapolis may be home to a vibrant suite of film, television and animation clusters.

 

Of course, Mediapolis will not replicate the street scenes of these cities entirely. Internationally renowned architect Bernard Tschumi was clear that he wanted to preserve Singapore’s tropical uniqueness even as he brought in elements from these cities.

And distinct the Mediapolis will be. Mr Tschumi’s works are commonly associated with a post-modern form of architecture called deconstructivism, where buildings take on non-rectilinear shapes or non-uniform surfaces to stimulate a sense of controlled chaos.

He has also introduced this concept to the Mediapolis masterplan – sides of buildings facing the central street will have glass facades and billboards, while the other sides will have to be constructed with other types of material such as steel or wood to create a contrast.

For a project that involved so much creative effort, what exactly is the Mediapolis?

What the Mediapolis is

Located in one-north, the 19-hectare Mediapolis was launched in December last year. It is set to become a self-contained media ecosystem comprising soundstages with green screen capabilities, digital production and broadcast facilities and media schools.

There will also be centres for activities in interactive digital media and research and development; computer-generated imagery and visual effects; games and animation; and intellectual property creation and digital rights management.

Mediapolis was created in response to Singapore’s expanding media sector. In 2005, it reported an annual turnover of $18.2 billion, contributing $4.9 billion value added to the country’s GDP. It also employed close to 55,000 people.

Media funding has also grown with about $1 billion anchored here. Award-winning films, games and animation and major international co-productions such as the filming and production of Mark Burnett’s Contender Asia and The Contender 4 also took place in Singapore.

Global media giants such as Lucasfilm, Linden Lab, EA, Ubisoft and Rainbow SpA have also set foot here. And more media activities such as the upcoming shoot of Jan de Bont’s Point Break 2 will take place this year.

The government therefore came up with Mediapolis to position Singapore as a media hub. Four agencies – JTC Corporation, the Media Development Authority (MDA), the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) and the Economic Development Board (EDB) – were involved.

‘JTC is pleased to be part of this multi-government agency effort that propels Singapore ahead as a trusted global media capital,’ said Philip Su, JTC’s assistant chief executive. ‘We are glad to contribute to building the critical pieces, which will complement each other in the growth of a vibrant media ecosystem.’

JTC is also the master developer of one-north. The Mediapolis will be the third strategic industry cluster in one-north, after Biopolis (biomedical sciences) and Fusionopolis (infocomm, media, engineering and physical sciences).

‘Mediapolis will also be able to leverage on the creative community in the neighbouring Wessex Estate, and tap on the synergies and world-class expertise within one-north,’ said Mr Su.

MDA chief executive Christopher Chia also expressed great hopes for the Mediapolis. It is ‘an essential piece of a comprehensive media ecosystem that we are building’, he said. ‘Over the years, Singapore’s media industry has made great strides, particularly in media financing and international co-productions. To elevate ourselves to the next level, we are finding ways to add scale and synergy to what we already have.’

The government also consulted an International Advisory Committee in the conceptualisation of Mediapolis. The panel comprised media industry insiders such as Dune Entertainment chairman and chief executive Greg Coote, Warner Brothers Pictures president of physical productions Steve Papazian, and film maker and director Shekhar Kapur.

Mediapolis will be developed in two phases. For phase one, JTC has reserved a 1.2-hectare plot of land for works to begin in the first quarter of this year. Local media production company Infinite Frameworks (IFW) will invest in and develop a soundstage complex here.

Cutting edge

IFW is a producer of cutting-edge computer graphics and visual effects for television and feature films. The complex is expected to cost $80 million to $120 million and could house three soundstages when completed in two years.

‘The soundstage at Mediapolis presents a unique opening for Infinite to further augment our distinctive range of specialist services for the film and television industries,’ said IFW managing director Mike Wiluan.

The second part of phase one’s development would start after Ayer Rajah Camp relocates in 2011 and could be completed in 2020 at the latest. No date has been set for works on phase two to begin.

The entire Mediapolis could take as long as 20 to 30 years to complete. According to Chan Yeng Kit, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, the speed of development will depend on demand from the media industry.

Source : Business Times –  Mar 2009

From factories… …to Fusionopolis

JTC Corp talks about how it has come this far since its birth in 1968

MUCH was at stake when Jurong Town Corporation (JTC) workers started hacking away at the uninhabited jungles and marshlands of the Jurong area in 1968.

  

The fate of not only the future industrial hub of Jurong, but also Singapore itself, might have been in the balance.

‘If JTC had failed, Singapore might have failed,’ said Mr Ong Geok Soo, assistant chief executive of the body now known as JTC Corp, in a recent interview.

He has been at JTC through almost all of its 40 years, and remembers well the early challenges.

‘We seeded the whole process. We developed Jurong town,’ said Mr Ong. ‘In the early days, JTC built roads, drains, sewers and worked with the Public Utilities Board to bring in power.’

Fortunately, the pioneers at JTC were a gung-ho bunch. There were some ‘daredevils’ who went all out to get the project done.

Back then, JTC was an all-round developer, building not only factories but even flats and gardens. It practically carved out Jurong town, and also built some of the flats in the area, which were later transferred to the Housing Board.

Although few entrepreneurs were initially willing to invest in Jurong, it eventually attracted huge foreign investment.

‘In the early days, we had to build confidence and trust as we had to show investors we were credible. Customers were not yet at our door,’ said Mr Ong.

Slowly, more and more customers came. Then began JTC’s evolution, from its founding purpose to develop the Jurong Industrial Estate, to a much wider role in Singapore’s development.

It began to build more no-frills low-rise factories elsewhere across the island in the 1970s.

Then it moved on to building multi-storey factories and high-tech business parks. ‘Customers became more sophisticated. They wanted labs, showrooms, warehouse space.’

Gradually, the private sector was also able to provide and manage the same sort of space that JTC had been providing.

That meant JTC had to do more. It then reclaimed land that was eventually offered to business clusters in need of space. Chemical firms were housed on Jurong Island and pharmaceutical players at Tuas Biomedical Park, for instance.

Then, plans were laid out for the $15 billion one-north – a 200-ha self-contained research hub in Buona Vista promoting a ‘work, live, learn and play’ lifestyle. It is to be built over 15 to 20 years.

JTC has played a key role in Singapore’s move into research and development and product design, helping the nation keep up with the times by offering innovative products to attract investors.

Since 2001, JTC has gone on to build Biopolis and then Fusionopolis at one-north. Media Park will follow.

These clusters of intelligent, cutting-edge ‘factories’ are striking examples of how far JTC has come since 1968. The high-rise buildings boast green features and combine work with leisure.

Apart from work spaces, the first phase of Fusionopolis, a $560 million two-tower-cum-podium development, has serviced apartments, shops and 13 public sky gardens, for instance. It even has a state-of-the art experimental theatre, which boasts a unique $380,000 timber beads-acoustic wall padding.

Construction of the 30-ha Fusionopolis, which will stretch over at least six phases, started in 2003 when the Sars outbreak was taking its toll on the economy. ‘We were prepared to put our money into it but nobody trusted us,’ said Mr Philip Su, JTC’s assistant chief executive.

Market confidence was then at a low ebb so JTC wasn’t sure if there would be takers for the space. Nevertheless, it forged ahead with the project, believing in its long-term potential. ‘Now I’ve got a problem. I don’t have enough space. Now, we have to launch phase 4,’ said Mr Su.

Due to a lack of space, JTC is also going underground to create more usable space for Singapore. It is building an underground oil storage facility called Jurong Rock Cavern, which will feature over 2.7 million cubic metres of storage space when completed.

There are plans for an underground science city catering to research and development and an underground warehouse.

Among its other new ideas is one which looks at housing business clusters in a high-rise complex. For instance, a car mart can be combined with warehousing and logistics facilities.

These projects, which the private sector finds too big, complex and risky to handle, will be the focus of JTC in future.

It recently sold $1.71 billion worth of its ready-built facilities to Mapletree Investments as it shifts focus to such strategic projects that will help take Singapore into the future.

‘In the early days, we had more flexibility as we had plenty of land,’ said Mr Ong. ‘Now, we are short of land so there’s more planning, more thinking… We are less visible because Singapore is more developed now.’

Nevertheless, there is always a place for JTC in Singapore, said Mr Ong.

‘Private developers won’t be holding a lot of land and pumping money into, say, Seletar Air Base, at the start,’ he said. ‘They will want to see some seeding in place first.’ JTC is turning Seletar into a business aviation hub.

Source : Straits Times –  Dec 2008

Whiff of Hollywood to touch Buona Vista

Singapore aims big with billion-dollar media hub at one-north

Locals could be rubbing shoulders with movie stars and Hollywood bigwigs at the one-north cluster in the near future. 

     

And films like box-office hit 300, part of a new wave of films that rely extensively on state-of-the-art digital movie studios, could be spawned from studios coming up in a new 19 hectare Buona Vista enclave, called Mediapolis@one-north.

Singapore’s new media hub is a billion-dollar mega project that could see more than a dozen buildings sprawled across a lush landscape by 2020.

Announcing Mediapolis at the Asia Television Forum trade show yesterday, Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts Lee Boon Yang said the hub will be a ‘crucible’ for creating and distributing content from Singapore to the world.

Mediapolis will sit on land roughly the size of 19 football fields adjacent to Portsdown Avenue, a plot now partly occupied by the Ayer Rajah military camp.

It will ‘have facilities not found elsewhere in Singapore and become the ideal home for international and local media companies, media schools and R&D (research and development) firms’, the minister said.

At yesterday’s media briefing, Chan Yeng Kit, chairman of the Mediapolis steering committee, said that Mediapolis is proceeding despite the financial downturn because demand for co-production expertise and facilities remains robust.

Mr Chan, who is also the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (Mica), added: ‘In some ways, the downturn does provide a window of opportunity for us, with construction costs coming down. By prepping the ground now and strengthening the whole ecosystem for media with scaled-up infrastructure and greater depth, we will be ready to catch the tide and gear up for the next stage of growth when recovery comes.’

The media industry is ‘fairly recession-proof’, he noted, because consumers will still continue to spend on entertainment in a downturn.

Four government agencies will jointly steer Mediapolis. They are the Media Development Authority (MDA), JTC Corporation, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and the Economic Development Board (EDB).

Commercial developers are expected to undertake most of the development at the park, alongside JTC. The total gross floor area will come to around 400,000 square metres, according to a JTC spokesman.

Construction will kick off in the first quarter of next year on a 1.2 hectare plot of land. Local media production firm Infinite Frameworks will be Mediapolis’ first developer.

The firm yesterday announced that it will be investing between $80 million and $120 million to build Singapore’s first purpose-built soundstage complexes. These are hanger- like studios that can be fitted with movie sets and so-called green screens, which are used by studios to create the illusion of on-location shooting.

When completed by 2020, Mediapolis will have movie studios, digital production and broadcast facilities, research labs, games and animation studios, offices, service apartments and high-tech hotels.

There will also be a sprawling park that can host outdoor movie screenings and provide location settings for film companies.

According to JTC assistant chief executive Philip Su, Mediapolis could swell by another 18 hectares in a future second-phase development after 2020. This will likely be sited south of the current 19 hectare plot.

Mediapolis is expected to stoke an already bullish Singapore media industry. According to a joint statement, between 2000 and 2005, this industry reported an annual turnover of US$13.4 billion in revenue, contributing 4.5 per cent, or US$3.6 billion, to Singapore’s gross domestic product and employing 53,500 people.

There has also been an influx of overseas projects, with the upcoming shoot of Jan de Bont’s Point Break 2 here next year an eye-catching example. A number of global media giants such as Lucasfilm, Linden Lab, EA, Ubisoft and Rainbow SpA have also set up facilities in Singapore.

For more info on homes around one-north, pls login www.onenorth.biz .

 

Source : Business Times –  Dec 2008

PM Lee opens Fusionopolis, second major R&D hub

Singapore’s second major research and development (R&D) hub – Fusionopolis – was opened by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Friday, with the announcement that the Republic recorded the highest gross domestic expenditure in R&D last year.

Fusionopolis stands side by side with Biopolis, the biomedical sciences hub.

Mr Lee told the gathering of top international researchers that the current global financial turmoil has clouded Singapore’s economic outlook, and the economy has gone into recession.

But Singapore’s R&D programme takes a long-term perspective, and will proceed despite the immediate ups and downs.

Mr Lee said funding will not be affected as the government is fully committed to investing in R&D to develop a key capability that will keep the economy competitive.

Mr Lee said: “We can’t go up and spend more when times are good and cut back and send researchers back home when times are bad. Sometimes, other countries have to do that and their budgets have year-to-year exigencies and it causes great instability. Our aim is to have a buffered, stable long-term trend.

“Our steady commitment will continue to draw researchers to set up and root their research activities in Singapore, and give investors the confidence to establish high-tech industries and corporate R&D centres here. While the scale of our R&D effort is new, R&D itself is something which we have pursued for some time. It has played an important role in Singapore’s industrial development.

“Our public research institutions (RIs) are the bridge that translates public R&D into useful outcomes for the economy and society. Many RIs have grown alongside the industrial sectors they support. By intertwining their research programmes with the needs of industry, our RIs provide companies access to new knowledge and innovative technologies that help to sustain their competitive edge.”

Mr Lee said Singapore spent S$6.3 billion in R&D last year, with the private sector accounting for two-thirds of the expenditure.

The 2007 amount was also an unprecedented increase of 26 per cent from 2006, and double the S$3 billion recorded in 2000. The results are based on a National R&D survey conducted by A*STAR.

Meanwhile, Singapore’s Interactive Digital Media industry is also getting a boost. The Media Development Authority – also housed at Fusionopolis – announced that 15 new projects will get S$12 million in funding.

Collectively, these projects will result in an increase of some S$37 million in total business spending for Singapore. They will also create 240 new jobs and provide hands-on training for some 5,600 students and professionals.

A*STAR said the futuristic 30-hectare Fusionopolis, which will be developed over six phases, is Singapore’s icon for R&D in interactive media, physical sciences, engineering and technology.

There are currently some 800 scientists, engineers and game developers housed at Fusionopolis. And that is set to increase to 2,400 by 2012, when the second phase is ready.

Source : Channel NewsAsia – Oct 2008

JTC completes S$20m state-of-the-art theatre in Fusionopolis

 

Beijing has “The Bird’s Nest”. Singapore’s Esplanade is sometimes referred to as “The Durians”. Now, meet “The Egg” – Singapore’s new S$20m venue for arts performances.

The oval-shaped Genexis Theatre is sandwiched between two office buildings at Fusionopolis at one-north, an upcoming R&D hub in Singapore. It is the first theatre built by JTC, Singapore’s largest industrial landlord.

JTC’s Assistant CEO, Philip Su, said: “They (the tenants) wanted a space for them to launch their products, they wanted a space for them to hold specific conferences.

“And because of the proximity to all these scientists, engineers, media people, we wanted to position this theatre together with the common area here to be a science-based, arts-based location. So now, you can have a science festival here and an arts festival here.”

JTC had initially planned to build an auditorium, but decided to double their budget and go for an experimental theatre instead, since there is a demand for it.

Mr Su said: “Most of the performing arts centres, venues, they’re very much restricted to a fixed configuration. And those that are not fixed, whether it’s the Arts House or the Substation, you find that the numbers for the audience are not big enough.

“Here we want to marry both, the intimacy of a good performance with the closeness to the artists, and yet in the same breath be able to seat more people 50-70 cm away from the performances.”

Research for the theatre started in 2005. Surveys were done with several arts groups and venues in Singapore, including The Esplanade, which said that an experimental theatre like Genexis would add value to the local performing arts scene.

The theatre’s unique features include 560 adjustable seats which can be moved in any direction, or kept, depending on the event; 400,000 timber beads which line the curved walls as acoustic padding; and a cargo lift just behind the curtains so trucks can load up props minutes before a performance.

The Genexis also has a wired lighting grid, possibly the first built for a theatre in Singapore. Technicians can actually walk on it in any direction to reach and adjust the over 30 lights in the house.

Ahead of its launch on October 17 with Fusionopolis, Genexis has already been booked for a week-long science festival and a Christmas performance.

Source : Channel NewsAsia – Oct 2008

CapitaLand’s one-north investment costs more

CAPITALAND yesterday said that its investment in one-north hub will now cost $476.8 million – up from $380 million announced in September 2007 – because of rising construction costs.

 

CapitaLand will own and manage a retail and entertainment zone called the hub at Vista Xchange at JTC’s one-north.

Partner New Creation Church’s Rock Productions, which will own and manage a civic and cultural zone, will invest $499.5 million in that project – up from $280 million announced last year.

Rock’s increase is partly due to a planned increase in gross floor area (GFA) at the civic and cultural zone.

The zone will now have a GFA of 38,000 square metres, up from ‘over 30,000′ sq m announced previously.

The new investment figures mean that the hub will now cost $976.3 million, up from $660 million announced in September 2007.

CapitaLand and Rock yesterday said that they have awarded a $633 million contract for construction of the hub to Hexacon Construction Pte Ltd.

The project is expected to be completed by mid-2012.

CapitaLand said that despite the higher cost, its projected return will remain the same.

‘We have enhanced our asset plan and are thus still able to achieve our target rate of return,’ a spokesman told BT.

Shares of CapitaLand, Singapore’s largest developer, continued to take a beating yesterday on various concerns – news of the increased investment, worry over the developer’s exposure to China and a plunge in the Singapore stock market.

CapitaLand lost as much as 28 cents or 6.5 per cent. It ended the day 26 cents down at a one-year low of $4.03.

Like other developers, CapitaLand has seen its stock price sink as warnings about China’s property market emerged over the past few weeks.

China’s market could be headed for a ‘meltdown’ as home prices and sales slump, Morgan Stanley analysts said on Sept 12.

Developers including China Vanke, the nation’s biggest publicly traded real estate developer, and Poly Real Estate Group have reported falling sales amid government lending curbs.

‘Investors are a bit jittery about the forecasts,’ CIMB property analyst Donald Chua said yesterday.

CapitaLand’s shares have fallen 8 per cent since end-August, while Keppel Land’s stock has fallen 16.2 per cent in the same period.

Keppel Land lost as much as 28 cents or 8.1 per cent yesterday. The stock closed 19 cents down at $3.25 – also a 52-week low.

Source : Business Times –  Sep 2008