Ogilvy Centre to become a hotel

AN 82-YEAR-OLD colonial office building next to the famous Lau Pa Sat hawker centre has been earmarked as a hotel site and will be sold next year.

The curved four-storey Ogilvy Centre at the junction of Robinson Road and Boon Tat Street has been added to the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s (URA) list of government land sites for sale.

The building was given conservation status in 2000, so the developer who buys the site must retain its facade and part of the interior.

Its neo-classical style, with large decorative ionic columns and recessed balconies with cast-iron balustrades, was the design of F.G. Lundon of Swan and Maclaren, the oldest architectural firm in Singapore.

As a hotel, it will be able to host 70 guest rooms, said the URA yesterday.

Property consultants said the hotel could prove to be popular among business travellers, like the luxury 17-room Klapsons, The Boutique Hotel that opened on Hoe Chiang Road this year.

‘There are not many boutique business hotels in the Central Business District area,’ said Mr Leonard Tay, director of CB Richard Ellis Research.

Built in 1927 as the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company, the Ogilvy Centre has also been known as the Cable and Wireless Building and the Telecommunications Authority of Singapore Building.

The current lease expires in February. Advertising and public relations firm Ogilvy Group occupies three floors while sandwich joint Subway, coffee chain Starbucks and fast-food outlet Old Chang Kee have outlets on the first floor.

The Ogilvy Centre sits on a 0.18ha site and is expected to be available for sale next June. It is on the URA’s reserve list, which means an interested developer must submit an acceptable bid, which will then trigger a public tender.

The URA said it is still trying to decide what kind of sale conditions will be put on the building, but it could possibly be sold with a lease of 30 years or 60 years.

The building is one of two new hotel sites being added to the reserve list for the first half of next year. The other is a 0.45ha plot at Robertson Quay that can accommodate 350 hotel rooms.

The eight other hotel sites already on the reserve list will be carried over to next year, including plots at Kallang Riverside, Tanjong Pagar and Alexandra Road. In total, the 10 sites can host 3,435 new hotel rooms.


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FULFILLING A NEED

‘There are not many boutique business hotels in the Central Business District area.’ – Mr Leonard Tay, director of CB Richard Ellis Research. Property consultants believe the hotel at Ogilvy Centre could be popular among business travellers.

Source: Straits Times, 7 Nov 2009