NCO Club/Beach Road camp grounds to a City Developments consortium was accompanied by a tinge of envy as observers pointed out that the winning bid

As a new symbol of environmentally-friendly architecture was unveiled yesterday, green became the topic of discussion in more ways than one. The award of the former NCO Club/Beach Road camp grounds to a City Developments consortium was accompanied by a tinge of envy as observers pointed out that the winning land bid of nearly $1.69 billion is believed to be around $500 million lower than the top bid, which was not even short-listed under the two-envelope tender.

The Urban Redevelopment Authority chose to first evaluate the various concepts before looking at the money on the table.

CityDev and its partners Istithmar (part of the Dubai World Group) and El-Ad Group are expected by market watchers to invest a total sum of $2.5 billion or more in the project. They plan to develop two towers (45- and 42-storeys high) - that are expected to house two luxury hotels, offices and apartments - and restore four conservation buildings (for retail and hotel-related uses like function rooms).

The cutting-edge green features in the Foster & Partners-designed scheme include slanting facades for the towers to catch winds and direct air flow to ground-level spaces, a canopy covering open areas, linking conservation buildings with two high-rise towers and providing shelter from the elements and drawing air currents to cool the area beneath it. And water will be collected off the towers and the canopy to flow into a holding tank underground, instead of being wasted.

The development, to be called South Beach, is set to become a ‘revolutionary New Eco-Quarter in Singapore’ when it is completed by 2012, CityDev said.

Still, the price of the winning bid came under some scrutiny.

Of the seven bids on the table, only two - that of the CityDev consortium and a joint venture between Keppel Land and Cheung Kong Holdings - made it past the concept evaluation stage. That is when URA moved onto the second stage of the two-envelope process to award the tender to the higher bidder.

The Keppel Land-Cheung Kong bid was worth $1.39 billion while the CityDev consortium’s bid of $1.69 billion was comfortably higher and clinched the deal for it. The winning bid for the 3.5 hectare plot with a 99-year leasehold tenure worked out to $1,069 per square foot of potential gross floor area.

The top bid, believed to be more than $2 billion, had come from one of the other five who tendered but did not make it past the concept stage. They included: a JV between Pontiac Land Group and Morgan Stanley; CapitaLand; another JV between Keppel Land and Cheung Kong; and two bids by Overseas Union Enterprise.

URA said that overall, the CityDev consortium’s concept proposal offers a ‘compelling and attractive scheme’ that would create a ‘truly distinctive development and an exemplary showcase of ‘green’ architecture in Singapore’.

CityDev executive chairman Kwek Leng Beng said: ‘We are confident that South Beach will elevate Singapore’s unique branding as a global city and help attract more prominent investors from all over the world.’

CityDev, Istithmar and El-Ad will each hold a one-third stake in the project. CityDev is no stranger to its partners. El-Ad is a US property investment group controlled by Yitzhak Tshuva, to whom CityDev’s hotel arm Millennium & Copthorne Hotels sold its stake in The Plaza hotel in New York in August 2004. City e-Solutions, a hospitality business unit of CityDev’s parent Hong Leong Group, and Istithmar are partners in a venture that plans to open no-frills hotels in Southeast Asia under Tony Fernandes’s Tune Hotels.Com brand.

The development on the 3.5 hectare Beach Road site will be directly next to the Circle Line Esplanade MRT Station and will also be linked by an underground pedestrian network to the existing City Hall MRT Interchange Station. The site can be developed into a maximum gross floor area of 1.58 million sq ft. CB Richard Ellis executive director Li Hiaw Ho reckoned that the developers will sell the apartments to help part-finance the project.

URA said the attractive first-storey layout in the winning scheme includes a series of internal streets, sunken courtyards and tiered gardens lined with shops, and food and beverage outlets. It said the development will be potentially able to achieve a Green Mark Platinum rating, the highest here for buildings that feature energy-efficient, water-efficient and environmentally-friendly design.

‘The undulating geometry of the environmental filter canopy is designed to help induce cooling air currents through the spaces below’ and the canopy as well as building facades will incorporate photovoltaic cells (solar cells), it added.

Source : Business Times - 11 Sept 2007