Camden Park bungalow plots owned by late-ACS principal on market

Camden Park bungalow plots owned by late-ACS principal on market

TWO adjacent bungalow plots in the Camden Park Good Class Bungalow (GCB) Area near the Botanic Gardens that used to belong to the late Anglo-Chinese School (ACS) principal Earnest Lau have been put up for sale by tender.

Mr Lau died in March 2011; his wife Kwa Geok Lian, who was a former principal of Anglo-Chinese Junior School, had died much earlier.

The couple did not have any children and Mr Lau is understood to have bequeathed the Camden Road properties to the Kampong Kapor Methodist Church, where he was active.

The church is putting the properties up for sale.

PropNex Realty is marketing the freehold District 11 properties through a tender exercise that will close on April 12. Each plot has an old single-storey house. Potential buyers may bid for either or both plots, which are expected to be bought for redevelopment.

The guide price is S$35 million for both properties, which reflects S$1,288 per square foot on the 27,176 sq ft total land area of the two plots, said June Lee, associate marketing director at PropNex, when contacted by The Business Times.

The smaller plot, 15 Camden Park, has a land area of 13,115.81 sq ft and a S$16.9 million guide price. The larger plot of 14,059.81 sq ft at 15A Camden Park has a guide price of S$18.1 million

The two sites may be amalgamated.

The properties are a stone's throw from Hollandse Club and the Japanese Association, Singapore.

GCBs are the most prestigious type of landed housing in Singapore because of the planning constraints to preserve their exclusivity and low-rise character.

The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) has designated 39 locations on mainland Singapore as Good Class Bungalow Areas.

Typically, GCBs have a minimum land area of 1,400 square metres (15,069 sq ft); however, when GCB Areas were gazetted in 1980, they included some smaller existing sites.

These are still considered GCBs as they would be bound by the other GCB planning rules if they were to be redeveloped.

For instance, such plots cannot be further sub-divided and they cannot be built more than two storeys high (plus an attic and a basement).

Mr Lau was a highly respected educator.

His association with ACS began in 1937, when he attended the school as a student. He went on to study at Ohio's Oberlin College and Oxford's Balliol College.

In 1955, he joined ACS as a teacher and was its principal from 1977 to 1983.

Mr Lau subsequently served as director of the Regional Language Centre and the archivist of the Methodist Church in Singapore, according to a previous article in The Straits Times.

Mr Lau was also deeply involved in activities at Kampong Kapor Methodist Church.

As chairman of its local church executive committee, his last duty, on Jan 23, 2011, was to declare open its new extension wing near Jalan Besar.


This article was first published on March 7, 2016.
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