50 years of Tanglin Shopping Centre

After four attempts, Tanglin Shopping Centre has finally been sold for $868 million to Singapore-based developer Pacific Eagle Real Estate.

The clock is ticking on the 50-year-old commercial complex along Tanglin Road.

Tanglin Shopping Centre comprises a six-storey podium block, a 12-storey tower block rising six storeys above the podium block, and a car park occupying an eight-storey annex.

Basement 2 to the sixth storey are occupied by retail and office units, while the top six floors of the tower block are entirely office units.

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The concept of the multi-storey, air-conditioned shopping complex as a one-stop shopping destination came about in Singapore a couple of years after its independence from Malaysia in 1965.

At the time, Singapore was still trying to find its feet as an independent city-state; it was industrialising and modernising, and trying to shed the old for the new. Singaporeans were still used to shopping at shophouses and markets.

As urban renewal started to sweep through the old City, developers started pouring millions into building shopping complexes.

Newspaper advertisements for Tanglin Shopping Centre started appearing in 1969, and the podium block was completed by developer S. K. Chee by January 1972, at a cost of $7.5 million. It was the first of its kind along the Tanglin Road-Orchard Road shopping belt.

A 1969 Straits Times ad for a position in Tanglin Shopping Centre. Credit: SPH Media Trust.

A 1970 Straits Times ad, with the shopping complex’s original logo. Credit: SPH Media Trust.

Nearing completion in October 1971. Credit: SPH Media Trust.

Other shopping complexes completed around the same time included Peninsula Shopping Centre at Coleman Street, and Specialist Centre at Orchard Road (demolished in 2008).

Shortly before its opening, in September 1971, the New Nation discussed the new phenomenon of the shopping complex:

Credit: SPH Media Trust.

There is uncertainty over whether Singapore will soon have too many shopping arcades and complexes.

Developers generally say there is need for more shopping complexes but they seem unsure how long this need will last.

There are six shopping complexes in full operation, four more being readied for customers, three others being planned, and more are on the drawing board…

Developers I spoke to have the same straight-faced confidence they had when the complex concept first took root in 1967. Singapore, they say, seems to be overbuilding everything, but not shopping complexes and arcades…

“Shopping complexes will change the shopping habits of Singaporeans,” said Mr. T. M. Goh, whose Golden Mile Shopping Centre will open early next year. “Instead of browsing from rows and rows of shops and hopping across the roads to get what you want, you can get everything under one roof in a complex.

“Complexes are the thing of the future. Shop rows will have to go. The new concept in shopping is more convenient and comfortable, with easy parking and modern facilities. Customers don’t mind paying a little more for all this.”

Tanglin Shopping Centre got off to a roaring start, with 150 shops and kiosks occupying almost all available commercial space. German airline Lufthansa paid a cool $1.2 million for 5,000 square feet of office space on the ground and second floors (below). Occupancy rates remained near 100 per cent in the first few years.

Credit: SPH Media Trust.

This initial success prompted S. K. Chee to commence Phase II of construction - the tower block was completed around 1980. A circular concourse was added in the basement for exhibitions and campaigns, to be surrounded by antique shops. One of the antique shops was Antiques of the Orient, founded by Michael J. Sweet and Julie Yeo. It later moved to a larger space on the second floor.

Mr Sweet with antique paintings in Antiques of the Orient, in 1981. Credit: SPH Media Trust.

And Tanglin Shopping Centre stood for another four decades.

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I visited Tanglin Shopping Centre to see how it was faring.

The facade facing east.

The same view 51 years ago, in 1971, as the complex was nearing completion. This was before the tower block came up.

Credit: SPH Media Trust.

The architecture of the building exposed Basement Level 1 to the outside, which was a nice touch.

The foyer, where taxis and private-hire vehicles dropped off and picked up fares.

The main entrance at the podium block, which was rather small.

Level 1, raised about half a storey above ground level. There were several carpet shops here.

The interior looked dated and tired, and many shops were shuttered or empty. The mall had clearly seen better days.

The second floor.

I had the whole place to myself, and this was a Sunday afternoon.

I searched for Antiques of the Orient, and the floor directory listed it as occupying Units 39 and 40, but they were empty. The shop, like so many others, had left the mall.

The upper floors of the podium block.

The ground-floor lift lobby of the tower block. The tower block was equally quiet, and I took the lift to every floor to look around. No one stopped me.

The 10th floor.

The circular concourse at Basement Level 1 of the tower block.

The same location in 1981. Tzen Gallery has survived to the present...

... but again, most of the surrounding tenants have moved out.

A final look at Tanglin Shopping Centre before I left.

The Straits Times: “Funding public transport: Is it time to relook the model?”

Since my move to live in the city centre two years ago, I have taken public transport more often.

I own a car but it is a no-brainer with an MRT station a stone’s throw from my home and many bus services available in the area.

No more hassle with parking and city traffic.

Based on my experience, limited to mostly off-peak travel, Singapore’s public transport is first-rate - reliable, usually on time, safe and comfortable.

But it comes at an enormous cost to taxpayers.

The Government’s subsidy is a staggering $2 billion a year to two MRT and four bus companies.

Without this support, none of the operators would be able to survive, much less provide the service that commuters now have come to expect.

It is a far cry from the early days when Singapore used to pride itself as one of the few countries in the world with commercially viable transport companies operating without government funding.

In fact, when Singapore Bus Service (SBS), then the sole bus operator here, was publicly listed in 1978, the Government encouraged Singaporeans to buy shares in it and allowed them to use their Central Provident Fund (CPF) savings to do so.

The Government was so confident that the bus company would be financially successful that it guaranteed a payout of at least 7.5 per cent dividends to shareholders.

The thinking was that if commuters owned shares in the company, they might not protest too much when fares go up.

This was what the press statement then said:

“Government intends to ensure through the Authority that SBS (1978) is managed well enough to be able to pay not less than 7.5 per cent dividends per year to its shareholders.

“Government will allow bus fares to rise so that SBS (1978) will continue to operate viably, as is expected of a publicly listed company, and, at the same time, provide a higher standard of service.”

From today’s perspective it seems out of place for the state to be so intent on ensuring the financial viability of a privately owned company to the extent of almost guaranteeing that fares will be raised to make it so.

It was a government stingy with public money and which did not believe transport should be subsidised because doing so will lead to wasteful expenditure and consumption.

Instead it supported SBS by playing an active role in the company’s management, seconding a team of senior civil servants to manage it, and by approving regular fare increases.

Looking back now at what was done, you have to marvel at the directness and simplicity of the plan.

The objective was clear, and the public was told in no uncertain terms: Your fares will be raised regularly so that the bus company can be viable.

But how to make sure it will not slacken in serving the public?

A second bus company was allowed to operate in 1983 to provide some competition in the market. Both were expected to be commercially viable.

The plan worked for almost 40 years, until 2016 when a radically new idea was introduced.

By then, the world had changed, the MRT network had grown substantially and the two bus companies were struggling to remain profitable.

In the 2011 General Election, the quality of public transport, with overcrowded buses and trains, became a hot issue.

The Government intervened in 2012, and, in an unprecedented move, added almost 1,000 new buses to the two companies’ fleet, costing $1.1 billion, paid for with taxpayers’ money.

It was the beginning of a new approach in which it would own all the assets, including buses and trains, decide the service quality, plan the routes, and tender out the operation in several competitive bids.

On top of this, it pays the successful operator a fixed sum to cover cost and a bit more to make it a profitable business.

In effect, the Government bears all the risk and responsibility of meeting commuters’ needs and expectations.

The same formula applies to the MRT system.

The result of all this massive investment has been a much improved service with shorter waiting times and less crowded buses and trains.

But costs have risen exponentially, and well above earlier estimates.

In 2016, the authorities announced that it will need $3.5 billion to $4 billion over the next five years to implement the new bus plan.

That figure has now been exceeded, and is closer to a billion dollars a year.

If you include rail services, the subsidy amounts to $2 billion a year.

Public transport is now a heavily subsidised government service, along with healthcare and education - a complete reversal of the earlier policy.

The change has benefited commuters, as well as bus drivers who have seen their earnings rise because of greater competition in the market.

But as with all subsidised services, keeping control over cost will always be an issue unless clear objectives are set and rigorous measures implemented to monitor performance and efficiency.

This is not an easy task because it requires the authority to understand transport operation as well as the operator and to know what is happening on the ground.

Does the Land Transport Authority (LTA) have enough expertise and experience to do this well?

A friend who previously worked in this field pointed out to me that when the first bus tender results were announced, he noticed that the cost of purchasing a bus in the successful bid was substantially higher than what existing operators had been paying.

He concluded then that there was no way the operation could be viable without massive government funding. I do not know if his assessment is correct, but the concern is a valid one.

There is a fundamental difference between the old model and the new with regard to keeping a lid on rising costs.

In the old world, private companies are on their own and are more careful with costs because it affects their bottom line directly. The downside is that service levels might suffer.

In the new model, operators get their fees from the Government as long as they meet service standards and tend to be less concerned with costs, which is largely borne by the Government.

This change in the motivation to keep costs down makes it imperative for the authorities to develop the expertise to know the ins and outs of running a bus or MRT company and how to spot wasteful expenditure.

It requires the LTA to be both eagle-eyed and tight-fisted.

It is also important to have a transparent system and to provide as much information as possible so that others can help in the scrutinising.

Ultimately, it is the duty of Members of Parliament to play this role when they approve the use of taxpayers’ money.

But it isn’t easy when they do not have the necessary information to do the job.

When my colleague in this newspaper Kok Yufeng wrote about the issue of Singapore’s bus contracting model in October, he noted that the LTA had stopped publishing bus performance data since 2015.

It had also refused to disclose the amount of incentive payments made to bus companies despite repeated requests to do so.

Associate Professor Walter Thereisa, a former Nominated MP, made the same point in the article, adding that it was hard to assess how the new model was working without proper studies and a lack of publicly available data.

This opacity will reinforce the perception that not enough is being done to keep costs down, and raises questions about whether the model needs further tweaking.

The big elephant in the room: How to justify paying billions to private companies which also return healthy profits to their shareholders?

If so much public money has to be spent, why not nationalise the entire network so as to benefit from economies of scale?

One chief executive, for instance, instead of six?

I do not know if this is a workable alternative but the issue deserves a thorough discussion, hopefully, after the experts have conducted their studies with much-needed information released by the authorities.

Everyone, including the Government, agrees that the present amount of state funding is unsustainable.

But no one seems to know how to turn the corner and where the final destination ought to be.

Singapore’s newest National Monument

Fort Siloso on Sentosa has been put forth to be gazetted a national monument.

Fort Siloso. Credit: The Straits Times.

Announcing this on Tuesday (Jan 18), the National Heritage Board (NHB) said Fort Siloso is the best-preserved 19th century fort in Singapore, and serves as an important site to mark the nation’s war years.

Now a historical attraction, the fort was constructed in 1878, and was part of a set of strategic coastal fortifications set up as Singapore grew in importance as a trading port in the late 19th century.

Designed to protect Singapore from a seaward attack, its guns fired at Japanese troops in the west of Singapore during World War II and destroyed the oil refineries at nearby Pulau Bukom and Pulau Sebarok to prevent the Japanese from using them as a resource, said NHB on its Roots.gov.sg portal.

NHB noted that between 1963 and 1966, Fort Siloso was manned by the 10th Singapore Gurkha Rifles Unit during Konfrontasi to prevent Indonesian saboteurs from landing on Sentosa and Keppel Harbour.

A national monument gazette is the highest form of recognition for a structure or site’s significance. It accords it legal protection from alterations and changes that would affect its character and significance. In addition to their national importance, monuments also have to be of historic, cultural, traditional, archaeological, architectural, artistic or symbolic significance…

Ms Jean Wee, director of NHB’s Preservation of Sites and Monuments division, added that discussions with Sentosa Development Corporation, which manages Fort Siloso, are under way to finalise the exact boundary of the site to be gazetted.

Mr Tan said that the board is hoping to gazette Fort Siloso a monument in February, and added that heritage NGOs were informed of the board’s plans for Fort Siloso on Monday.

Among those present was International Council on Monuments and Sites Singapore president Yeo Kang Shua.

Dr Yeo said Fort Siloso’s upcoming gazette will mark the first time multiple structures within a larger context or site have been recognised as monuments.

“The collective preservation of these structures and their landscapes is important to preserve the historic integrity of the site,” he added.

Dr Yeo said he hoped the authorities could look into protecting other military fortifications in Sentosa and around Singapore, as they collectively tell the story of Singapore’s historical coastal defences.

Singapore Heritage Society president Jack Lee added that there are not many physical reminders of Singapore’s World War II history left, and hence the society feels it is worth giving a higher degree of protection to those that remain…

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Another physical reminder of Singapore’s WWII history which should get at least conservation status, if not National Monument status, is the Battlebox at Fort Canning Hill.

The Battlebox is a former WWII-era British underground command centre, built in the 1930s to complement the headquarters of Malaya Command on Fort Canning Hill. Malaya Command was the army which defended Malaya and Singapore during WWII. It was in the Battlebox that Malaya Command made the decision to surrender Singapore to the invading Japanese on 15 February 1942.

The building where Malaya Command signed the document of surrender with the Japanese - the former Ford Factory along Upper Bukit Timah Road - was designated a National Monument on 15 February 2006.

I was part of the team who revamped the Battlebox and reopened it as a museum in February 2016. The museum subsequently became Singapore’s number one museum on TripAdvisor, from 2016 to the present.

As a museum, the Battlebox has achieved international recognition. Its designation as a National Monument is long overdue.