with suite of tenant amenities>Homegrown global asset management and development company Keppel is shifting its focus to other projects following the completion of its latest project, Keppel South Central. According to Samuel Ng, president of Keppel’s real estate division in Singapore, the development of Keppel South Central serves as a showpiece for the company.
The former Keppel Towers and GE Tower, now named Keppel Towers 1 and 2 respectively, were completed in 1991 and 1993. After the completion of Keppel South Central, the company is planning to pivot to other brownfield redevelopment projects.
Keppel South Central, located along Hoe Chiang Road in Tanjong Pagar, will offer approximately 650,000 square feet of office, retail, and event space. With typical office floors ranging from 20,000 to 22,000 square feet and a ceiling height of 3.2 meters, the property is expected to bring in a lot of potential tenants.
Currently, almost half of the tower’s office space and retail units have either been leased or are in the process of negotiation. The first anchor tenant, a financial services group, has already leased two floors, and office occupants are expected to start moving in as early as June.
In addition to office spaces, Keppel South Central has also introduced retail and event spaces on the ground floor, health and wellness spaces on the fifth and sixth floors, and a landscaped terrace on the 18th floor. Furthermore, the building also has end-of-trip facilities on Basement 1.
The newly renovated property has been equipped with modern technology such as facial recognition access, 5G Wi-Fi, and an indoor air-quality management system, making it on par with other Grade-A office buildings in the CBD. The building was also designed to support the needs of its tenants, accommodating after-hours operations with micro ACUs for localized cooling and smart building management systems to optimize energy usage.
Keppel South Central is a testament to the company’s focus on sustainability and urban renewal. The property has been certified by BCA as a Green Mark Platinum Super Low Energy building, with an estimated annual energy savings of 6.2 million kilowatt hours, equivalent to the power consumption of 1,300 homes in Singapore.
This impressive feat was made possible by incorporating green solutions that were previously tested at their other property, Keppel Bay Tower. In 2018, Keppel Land leveraged a BCA grant to test five new technologies in the building, making it Singapore’s first zero-energy commercial building in 2020.
The success of Keppel South Central has inspired the company to replicate the model across the region. Ng explains that the majority of office buildings across Asia Pacific will fail to meet the new standards for Grade-A office space since most of them were built in the 1990s or earlier. With the demand for green-certified properties on the rise, this presents an opportunity for sustainability-focused retrofits.
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To fund the redevelopment of brownfield projects across the region, Keppel has announced the first close of its flagship Keppel Sustainable Urban Renewal Fund (KSURF), with total funds under management of over $2.3 billion. The company’s in-house capability to execute the renewal works themselves gives them a competitive advantage over other asset managers.
After acquiring the asset, Keppel will complete the asset enhancement works, stabilise occupancy, and divest it within the fund’s life of seven years. To date, the company has applied its SUR initiative to eight projects across five countries, with three more projects in progress.