Retail offerings to come up near Bidadari

Retail offerings to come up near Bidadari

A land site allowing developers to build a mini-mall near the future Bidadari housing estate is the choicest of new sites unveiled in the Government Land Sales (GLS) programme for the second half of the year.

The Upper Serangoon Road site, next to Woodleigh MRT Station and the first sale site at Bidadari, could yield about 825 homes and up to 15,000 sq m of commercial space.

It is being released on the confirmed list, on the back of launches of Build-To-Order (BTO) flats there. "If the keen response to BTO sales in Bidadari is anything to go by, we may expect this site to be hotly contested," said JLL national research director Ong Teck Hui.

Retail opportunities are presently limited along the North-East Line, which runs through Woodleigh. The Poiz Residences, another mixed-use project, is coming up next to Potong Pasir MRT station, while Nex at Serangoon is the biggest draw currently.

"There are not many retail offerings around the Bendemeer area. With so many HDB flats coming into Bidadari in the future, this mall could be the next Junction 8," said CBRE research head for Singapore and South-east Asia Desmond Sim.

On top of the retail portion, another 8,200 sqm at the site is meant for integrated community and institution uses, which could be a community club, childcare centre or library, among other options.

More details will be provided later for the site, which will be launched around December by the Housing Board.

The first three residential projects at the 93ha Bidadari estate will have 2,139 flats and be ready in 2019 or 2020.

HDB also has plans for smaller shop clusters to be built in tandem with the housing developments, an HDB spokesman told The Straits Times yesterday.

Other sites on the confirmed list were residential sites in Sengkang, Little India and West Coast - each can yield 200 to 605 homes.

Some larger plots could be challenging for developers, who must build and sell all units within five years to avoid paying the Additional Buyers' Stamp Duty, said Roxy-Pacific Holdings executive chairman and chief executive Teo Hong Lim. "In the current market, sales are generally still quite slow," he told The Straits Times.

None of the confirmed list sites was marked for executive condominiums (ECs) - unsurprising given the many EC units for sale .

The Ministry of National Development yesterday also slashed the retail component of two reserve list sites, reflecting recent demand-supply imbalance of retail space. The maximum retail gross floor area for a Holland Road site was cut from 13,500 sq m to 6,800 sq m while that for a Beach Road site went from 8,000 sq m to 3,000 sq m.

wrennie@sph.com.sg


This article was first published on Jun 09, 2016.
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