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Plum 99-year leasehold site in Holland Road attracts 15 bids

This article is more than 12 months old

State tender for 99-year leasehold site closes with some developers placing multiple offers

A state tender for a plum 99-year leasehold commercial and residential site in Holland Road closed yesterday after attracting 15 bids.

Some developers placed more than one bid with different concept proposals for the site in order to boost their chances of clinching it.

Under the dual-envelope concept and price tender mode for the site's sale, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) released only the names of the bidders but not their bid prices.

A consortium with Far East Organisation, an affiliated company and Sekisui House put in three bids.

Three consortiums placed two bids each: Lendlease in a tie-up with Pontiac Land; Perennial Real Estate Holdings in partnership with Qingjian Realty; and GuocoLand in partnership with Hong Leong Holdings' fully owned unit Intrepid Investments, TID and Hong Realty.

The rest of the bidders, with one bid each, were City Developments in partnership with RB Capital; Allgreen Properties in partnership with Kerry Properties; and UOL Group, teaming up with United Industrial Corporation.

Also bidding were CapitaLand in partnership with Hotel Properties; SingHaiyi Group in a tie-up with its controlling shareholder Haiyi Holdings; and Chip Eng Seng in partnership with Roxy-Pacific Holdings and JBE Properties.

Bidders were required to submit their concept proposals and tender prices in two separate envelopes.

Under this system, only the envelopes with concept proposals were opened yesterday.

A Concept Evaluation Committee will first review the proposals against the criteria of quality of the design concept, quality of the public realm, and track record.

The Holland Road site can have a maximum gross floor area of 59,715 sq m, of which up to 13,500 sq m can be used for retail.

The URA has set a cap of 570 residential units for the project.

At least 60 per cent of the total GFA should be for residential use and the remaining 40 per cent may be for commercial use.

Market watchers expect it could take about two months before URA awards the site.

The successful bidder will have seven years to complete the project.

JLL national director Ong Teck Hui said the response to the tender reflected the attractiveness of the site, the upturn in the residential and commercial property sectors and the stabilising retail property segment.

ZACD Group executive director Nicholas Mak noted the presence of Chinese developers in this tender.

He said: "These developers were primarily developing residential projects in Singapore. Now they appear to be ready to expand into commercial development and possibly hold such commercial developments for investment."

Property