OFFICE SPACE CRUNCH

OFFICE SPACE CRUNCH:

(Availability of temporary offices): 6.

Mr Edwin Khew Teck Fook asked the Minister for National Development (a) whether he can provide more information on the earliest availability of temporary offices to ease the office space crunch; (b) what will be the average size of these offices; and (c) what will be the approximate cost to lease them.

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Mr Mah Bow Tan: Mr Speaker, Sir, the sale of the first transitional office site at Scotts Road was announced in early July 2007. Tender for the site closed on 22nd August 2007 and has been successfully awarded to the highest bidder. The site has a lease of 15 years. The successful tenderer can construct a 3- to 4-storey development and make available 16,000 square metres of office space in about a year's time if he is able to rush the planning and construction of the building.

Besides this transitional office site at Scotts Road, SLA has also made available a number of vacant State properties which can be quickly retrofitted and put to use as office. To date, SLA has made available 17 properties with a total gross floor area of 102,000 square metres for office use.

It recently awarded the tender for nine of these properties, with gross floor areas ranging from 700 square metres to about 20,000 square metres, and together can generate a total supply of about 54,000 square metres of office space. These properties include the former CPIB Building at Cantonment Road, the former CID Training Centre at Pearl's Hill Terrace, the former ITE premises at Pasir Panjang and the former Gan Eng Seng School and River Valley Primary School. The tenancy for these properties generally is for three years and will be renewable on terms of between three and six years. SLA is currently in the process of evaluating the tenders for several other properties for office use.

The Member asked about the rentals. The rentals for the transitional office space and vacant State properties will depend very much on the business plans of the successful tenderers and, of course, also on the prevailing market conditions.

URA and SLA will continue to identify more of such transitional sites as well as

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vacant State properties which can be put to use as offices.