Singapore’s Canary Wharf Is Running Out of Office Space
The Asian financial center has begun its quest for a new business district. But will tenants agree to leave the buzzing Marina Bay and move next to a tranquil lake?
Room to move.
Photographer: Ore Huiying/BloombergThe small island-state of Singapore wants to spread itself out more evenly by blurring the boundaries between where people go to work and where they live, shop and dine. That can’t happen as long as most large offices want to crowd into the central business district. A new round in this decades-long tug-of-war is about to begin with billions of dollars of real-estate investment at stake.
In the first half of next year, the government will offer the biggest land parcel it has sold since 2016 for office construction. The 6.8-hectare site is near Jurong Lake in the island’s western hinterlands, a tranquil setting that hosts a famous bird park nearby.1 This will be Singapore’s largest office-development project outside the CBD. The government may release more land in the area after judging demand and supply, but just the first site going under the hammer will potentially yield 150,000 square meters (1.6 million square feet) of work space.