Milestone Rapid Transit

A Reddit user, EconomicSanction - no doubt a history and transport buff - crafted this excellent map: Singapore’s old road milestones (which were phased out in the 1970s), plotted on a present-day map of the island, in the form of MRT stops; each “stop” is named after a place name or landmark found there. Great job!

Credit: EconomicSanction.

This map is a vivid illustration of how Singapore’s old trunk road system has been rendered obsolete by the expressway system, and dismantled by islandwide urban renewal - something that’s covered in my book Jalan Singapura. The “stops” remind us of communities and places that have been lost to development - Ama Keng, Hong Kah, Nee Soon, Tongkang Pechah, Kampong Gulega, and so on. And these are just places at every mile mark - there are others at ½-mile marks, and ¼-mile marks...

Ama Keng Village in 1986. Credit: National Archives of Singapore.

One garden, many gardens

It has long been established that Singapore is a “Garden City” - or at least, aspires to be one - but what about the “Garden” as a place name in the city-state?

A casual glance of the map reveals that most “Gardens” in Singapore, as place names, are in fact housing estates or neighbourhoods. Most of them are HDB neighbourhoods, in which a cluster of blocks are given a name to bequeath them a collective identity. These neighbourhoods are spread around the island.

Some examples: In the west, we have Boon Lay Gardens in Jurong West town, Hong Kah East Garden in Jurong East town, and Teban Gardens and Pandan Gardens by Pandan Reservoir. In the north, there are Marsiling Gardens and Yishun Gardens. Around the geographical centre of the island lie Farrer Gardens along Farrer Road, and Shunfu Gardens in Bishan. In the south, there is Blangah Gardens in Telok Blangah town. In the east, we can find Marine Drive Gardens and Marine Crescent Gardens in Marine Parade. And so on.

Teban Gardens in Jurong East. Credit: Google Maps.

Farrer Gardens, along Farrer Road. Credit: Google Maps.

A handful are private housing estates - the likes of Yunnan Gardens in Jurong West, Mayflower Gardens in Ang Mo Kio, Thomson Garden Estate in Bishan, and Tai Keng Gardens in the Upper Paya Lebar Road area. And of course, there’s the famous Serangoon Gardens in the northeast of the island.

Serangoon Gardens. Credit: Google Maps.

What’s left are actual gardens. Jurong Lake has the Japanese Garden and the Chinese Garden, also the name of an MRT station, and who can leave out our only UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Botanic Gardens.

The Botanic Gardens. Credit: National Parks Board.

Historically, it was the Botanic Gardens that came first, established on its present site in 1859. Its name was taken from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London.

Then we have to move forward half a century to 1915, when a lane off Kim Seng Road near the Singapore River was named Covent Garden. Again, its name was taken from London, the name of a famous West End market. The road Covent Garden was expunged by the early 1970s for an HDB estate, Covent Garden Estate, although the blocks’ addresses were 88 to 92 Zion Road. However, the estate was torn down about half a dozen years ago under the Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme.

Covent Garden in the 1954 street directory.

The shuttered shops of Covent Garden Estate before demolition. Credit: Singapore Lost & Filed.

The first truly Asian “Garden” opened in 1937 - Tiger Balm Garden along Pasir Panjang Road, known today as Haw Par Villa. The park was the fruit of business magnate Aw Boon Haw’s rich imagination.

Thereafter, numerous private housing estates followed, starting with Serangoon Garden from 1952, then the likes of Thomson Garden Estate in the early 1960s, and Tai Keng Gardens and Mayflower Gardens in the 1970s, among others.

Finally, the HDB neighbourhoods appeared from the 1970s as New Towns spread around the island.

***

What has troubled me is the lack of clarity as to whether some “Gardens” are singular or plural.

The most troubling of all is my very workplace - the Tiger Balm Garden.

It’s clear from historical photos that when it opened in 1937, it was a garden, no plural. That’s because the name on the Entrance Archway was “Tiger Balm Garden”.

The Entrance Archway of Tiger Balm Garden around 1938. The signboard reads "Tiger Balm Garden", not "Tiger Balm Gardens". Credit: Alamy.

And indeed, it was just one garden, which surrounded the villa known as Haw Par Villa. After the villa was torn down sometime after World War II, the garden survived.

However, as early as 1951, it began to be known as “Tiger Balm Gardens” in the newspapers. Eventually, this name - in the plural - caught on more than the original, even though the garden remained as one entity.

In 1995, when the garden was a theme park run by a private consortium, it was named “Haw Par Villa - The Original Tiger Balm Gardens”. And when Haw Par Villa MRT Station opened as part of the Circle Line in 2011, directional signs in the station gave “Tiger Balm Gardens” as an alternative name to Haw Par Villa. These acts solidified the plurality of its name. Today, “Tiger Balm Gardens” has appeared 440 times in the newspaper archives, while “Tiger Balm Garden” has appeared just 108 times.

Signs in Haw Par Villa MRT Station use the place name "Tiger Balm Gardens".

As for Serangoon Garden, probably the oldest and largest of housing estates with the name “Garden”, it was first named as such in 1952 - in the singular. But it also appeared in the plural the following year, in 1953. Today, there are almost 30,000 mentions of “Serangoon Garden” in the newspaper archives, while “Serangoon Gardens” appears almost 17,000 times. It’s both “Serangoon Garden Estate” and “Serangoon Gardens”, with landmarks such as Serangoon Garden Secondary School, and Serangoon Gardens Country Club.

Here, there's just one Garden. Credit: Serangoon Garden Secondary School Facebook page.

Perhaps, people have used - and continue to use - “Garden” and “Gardens” interchangeably because of the original “Garden” in Singapore - the Botanic Gardens. On one hand, it is one garden, but on the other, it comprises numerous gardens, so both singular and plural are correct. (It’s the same for London’s Royal Botanic Gardens.) Over time, the average person - not a stickler for little things like grammar in place names - did not see a serious distinction between “Garden” and “Gardens”, no matter where the name was applied.

Many gardens inside one Botanic Gardens. Credit: National Parks Board.

Today, the newer Gardens - mostly HDB neighbourhoods - are mostly in the plural. One exception I’ve found so far is Hong Kah East Garden. I wonder why it’s a Garden while almost all the others are Gardens. Or perhaps it doesn’t matter to the folks who had named it.

Changing Caldecott Hill

Urban redevelopment will be coming soon to the Caldecott area.

Mediacorp has finally put up for sale the sprawling site that formerly housed the Caldecott Broadcast Centre in Andrew Road.

Credit: The Straits Times.

The sale, via a public tender exercise, will close on Dec 9.

Spanning 752,015 sq ft, the site served as the broadcast hub for more than six decades until 2015, when Mediacorp relocated to the Mediapolis in one-north.

The media organisation was granted an outline approval by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) to redevelop the site, located in the Caldecott Hill good class bungalow (GCB) area, into two-storey bungalows with a minimum land area of 800 sq m per house.

It appointed an architect to work out a subdivision scheme for the 7ha site, accommodating 67 bungalow plots, subject to approval.

GCBs are detached houses located within one of the 39 designated zones and have a minimum land area requirement of 1,400 sq m.

But there can be houses within these designated areas which do not meet the minimum size.

The site, currently zoned for civic and community institution use under the URA’s Master Plan 2019, will have to be rezoned to residential use, which will entail payment of a differential premium (DP) to the state.

The leasehold site currently has a balance lease term of 73 years, which means the developer would also need to pay a lease upgrading premium (UP) to the Singapore Land Authority for the lease to be extended to a fresh 99-year tenure.

An application has been made for an in-principle approval for the lease to be extended.

Mr Karamjit Singh, chief executive of Showsuite Consultancy, one of the two consultants appointed to advise and market the property, said: “The gross land value for a proposed bungalow redevelopment on site is expected to be in excess of $400 million including DP and UP, which would translate to a land rate in the region of $540 per sq ft. The net land value could be in excess of $260 million.”

Based on the proposed scheme of 67 bungalows, the land cost would work out to about $6 million per land plot.

At this price, a developer may break even at about $9 million to $10 million per bungalow.

The detached houses are expected to be priced between $11 million and $14 million, subject to design and configuration.

“These ‘junior GCBs’ would cater to the underserved mid-tier segment of detached houses - the market between GCBs and entry-level bungalows,” Mr Singh said.

There has been no large-scale project of brand-new GCBs, junior or conventional, for a very long time.

The closest proxy would be bungalows at Sentosa Cove, which were launched between 2005 and 2010. As a result, the number of detached houses in Singapore has remained stagnant over decades.

“It was 10,000 plus 25 years ago and it remains 10,000 plus today. This represents less than 1 per cent of the country's total housing stock. During the same period, the average household net wealth has increased by over 300 per cent,” Mr Singh said.

Mr Michael Tay, head of capital markets, Singapore, at CBRE, the other consultant to the project, said: “There is a growing generation of buyers who see the more affordable leasehold properties as an opportunity to tie down less capital for their homes, while achieving their aspirational goals.

“In so doing, they free up capital to invest in another property for rental income.”

He added: “In addition to the bungalow redevelopment potential, we understand that URA may also be prepared to consider a proposal for the site to be redeveloped into a retirement village, subject to detailed evaluation.”

But Mr Singh said: “Buyers seeking to convert the property to a retirement village would need to consult and submit a proposal to the planning authorities.

“That said, we do believe the property would likely be redeveloped into bungalows as there are more housing developers than retirement village investors.”

Credit: The Straits Times.

The bungalows should fetch very good prices, as Caldecott Hill has an ideal geographical location - it’s a hill, near the geographical centre of Singapore Island, right next to the greenery of Bukit Brown, MacRitchie Reservoir, and the Central Catchment Area, and yet near Caldecott MRT Station (soon to be an interchange).

Base picture credit: Google Maps.

Caldecott Hill is part of an extensive cluster of hills south of MacRitchie Reservoir and west of Thomson Road. In the 1920s, the hill was covered by rubber plantations, while the hills to its west were part of the Bukit Brown municipal cemetery; Mount Pleasant to its south hosted colonial black-and-white mansions.

Base map credit: The National Archives, United Kingdom.

In the late 1930s, a housing estate of 70 dwellings was built on part of the hill. That was when the hill, and the estate, acquired the name Caldecott, after British colonial administrator Sir Andrew Caldecott (1884-1951).

The Straits Times reported on Caldecott Hill Estate’s construction in 1937:

In 1966, Mediacorp’s predecessor, Radio and Television Singapore, arrived at Caldecott Hill, moving into a new $3.6-million Television Centre, where it remained until the shift to one-north in 2015.

***

Following news of the sale of the Caldecott site, a Straits Times Forum writer submitted this letter:

It is disappointing that the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) has granted an outline approval to redevelop the 752,015 sq ft Caldecott Broadcast Centre site into two-storey bungalows (Mediacorp’s former Caldecott Hill home put up for sale, Oct 15).

Allowing for the development of an exclusive and gated community serves to accentuate the rich-poor divide.

It was mentioned that URA may also be prepared to consider a proposal for the site to be redeveloped into a retirement village.

The concept of a retirement village has not taken off, and locating it on a hilltop will pose accessibility issues for the elderly. A recently proposed dementia village in Sembawang also failed to take off, receiving only one bid, which was rejected as the offer price was deemed too low.

Perhaps inspiration can be drawn from other similar hilltop sites. Take, for example, Fort Canning with its hilltop capped with a colonial-era service reservoir. Pearl's Hill City Park also features another service reservoir.

The hilltop site in Caldecott can maintain the current zoning for civic and community institution use, coupled with the incorporation of a sizeable park and a service reservoir to increase Singapore’s water catchment as we strive further to be more self-sufficient in our water sourcing and needs.

Another idea would be to consider the site for a second infectious diseases centre, surrounded by lush and sizeable parkland, to expand upon the current success of the National Centre for Infectious Diseases.

The past has shown us that hilltop sites are preferred for hospital developments for ease of disease containment and treatment. Tan Tock Seng Hospital and Singapore General Hospital are both set on top of hills.

An alternative is to expand the Mount Alvernia Hospital campus located just across the road as the current site has reached its development potential and space constraints.

The authorities could launch a design competition for ideas and to seek local architecture firms’ input and creativity to harness the maximum potential of the site.

This would be better than the land owner’s appointment of its preferred architect to plan out the space for the development of good class bungalows, which excludes any public engagement and does nothing to bridge the rich-poor divide.

I don’t see Mediacorp budging from its plans, though. If it owns the lease for the land, why would it give up the golden opportunity to make tons of money from high-end bungalows? This is Singapore Inc., where the city-state is run like a corporation.

The abandoned Caldecott Broadcast Centre. Credit: Finbarr Fallon.