The West also rises with Jurong East makeover
360-hectare Jurong Lake District will marry offices and retail outlets with waterfront playground
By KALPANA RASHIWALA
(SINGAPORE) With malls, hotels, offices and entertainment outlets, the sleepy charms of the area around Jurong East MRT Station are poised for a stunning makeover. The place - called Jurong Gateway - will be turned into the biggest regional centre on the island.
Add to this the land and water development around the nearby Jurong Lake - with kayaking, dragon boating and a lakeside village - and the transformation that melds business opportunities with leisure pursuits will be complete.
Jurong Gateway will provide 5.4 million sq ft gross floor area of new office space and 2.7 million sq ft of retail, F&B and entertainment area - more than 2.5 times the current size of Tampines Regional Centre, Minister for National Development Mah Bow Tan announced yesterday.
The time frame for development will be about 10-15 years and sites in the location are likely to be tendered out for private sector development based on market demand and pace of take-up.
The 70-hectare Gateway will also have at least 1,000 new private homes as well as 2,800 hotel rooms - roughly the same quantum as the Singapore River hotel belt.
Meanwhile, the Lakeside precinct around the Jurong Lake has been earmarked as a new waterfront playground spread over 220ha of land and 70ha of water. It is envisaged as a major leisure destination for Singaporeans and tourists, with about four or five proposed new attractions.
Jurong Gateway and Lakeside together make up Jurong Lake District, the blueprints for which were revealed by Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) yesterday.
The 360ha total potential area for development is close to the size of Marina Bay.
In his speech at URA's corporate plan seminar, Mr Mah stressed the importance of decentralisation as a key planning strategy to maintain balance between supporting economic growth and a high-quality living environment.
While Marina Bay and the city remain Singapore's main commercial centre, new commercial hubs like Jurong Gateway will be developed outside the city centre to provide more choices of attractive business locations and bring jobs closer to homes. URA has also earmarked the area around Paya Lebar MRT Station for development into an alternative business hub.
URA said Jurong Gateway will be ideal for company headquarters, business services as well as companies in the science and the research and development (R&D) fields. Such companies will be able to tap a large labour pool from a one million-population catchment in Jurong East and West, Clementi and Bukit Batok, enjoy proximity to a cluster of over 3,000 companies in the International Business Park and Jurong and Tuas industrial estates. Jurong Gateway is also a major transport hub, with Jurong East MRT Station and a bus interchange. The area around the MRT station is designated for development into an integrated commercial and transport hub with white use - allowing office, retail, residential and hotel use. A short distance away, at Jurong Town Hall Road, sites have been designated for high-rise office use.
The tallest buildings in Jurong Gateway will be 35 storeys high but building heights will step down towards Jurong Lake, allowing most developments to have panoramic views of the lake.
A new big-box retail format incorporating consumer electronics, furniture and hypermarket being developed by TT International will add about 34,000 sq m of retail space when completed by end-2009.
Mr Mah also stressed that Singapore's long-term approach to planning - encompassing the Concept Plan and Master Plan process - is a fundamental part of the republic's sustainable development effort. He noted that Singapore's physical resources, especially land, are able to support a long-term population planning parameter of 6.5 million.
The minister also touched on how the influx of foreigners is making some Singaporeans uneasy. 'They find the competition for jobs and school places tough. They see themselves priced out of the housing of their choice.'
Highlighting the contribution of foreigners to various tiers of the Singapore economy and society, Mr Mah said: 'We must . . . convince our people that at the end of the day, if we want to have a good life, we must learn to accept the foreigners in our midst.'
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