ST : Pasir Panjang Village Centre to go‏

Nov 13, 2009

Pasir Panjang Village Centre to go

New owner will tear down building and build condo in its place

By Jessica Lim

CHANGE is coming to the Pasir Panjang Village area, home to a clutch of pubs, restaurants and shops.

The Village Centre, a four-storey building housing a Cold Storage supermarket and various shops ranging from a nail salon to a laundromat, will be pulled down and rebuilt as a condominium with shop spaces on the first floor and in its basement.

The tenants in the building have been given until April next year to move out.

A 30-space carpark and a bungalow sitting next to the building will also become part of the new five-storey development, which will be ready by 2013.

But the row of pubs and restaurants occupying the conserved shophouses next door will stay.

This change comes just as this sleepy hollow seems to be blossoming into a slightly busier suburban nook.

Mr C. K. Ching, chief executive of boutique property developer Hume Homes, which owns The Village Centre, said the tenants have to go in order for the place to be revitalised.

'There will be a better concept, more variety and will really add to the environment. Now, the place is very quiet,' he said.

Hume Homes bought the building from Ridge Investments for $23 million in June. A showroom launch for the condominium will be held in January, and the wrecking ball will start swinging in April.

The commercial space in the new development has already attracted interest from Starbucks, while Cold Storage has also expressed interest in moving back in.

The building - at the junction of South Buona Vista and Pasir Panjang roads - was a quiet spot only two years ago.

But tenants have since moved in, and brought with them customers in search of food and a tipple, groceries and other services, though the buzz is nowhere near that of Holland Village.

The change has ruffled a few feathers.

Nail salon owner Doreen Tan, 35, said she signed a two-year lease for her second-floor shop, Vois, only in May, and had sunk $20,000 into renovations.

'When we got the news, it was such a big blow to us,' she said of the termination letter, which came last month.

Some residents also dread the loss of the area's only commercial development.

Mrs Davi Beschizza, an artist in her 40s, and a mother of one, who lives in a condominium a 10-minute walk from The Village Centre, said: 'It's going to be very inconvenient. We don't have any other supermarket near here. For the next three years, I will have to take a bus or taxi to Bukit Timah Plaza or West Coast Mall, both of which are quite far away.'