The site at 110 Killiney Road was still tightly wrapped as of the fourth quarter
A long-delayed boutique hotel project in Singapore’s Orchard Road area has been put up for sale at an indicative price of S$195 million ($143.3 million), CBRE said Thursday.
The 115-key project is being offered to potential buyers via an expression of interest exercise closing on 30 May, according to the property consultancy, which is marketing the development at 110 Killiney Road on behalf of Singapore-based fund manager Lucrum Capital, which had acquired what was then the Tai Wah Building in 2017 for S$84.9 million.
“Freehold hotels in the Orchard Road submarket are rarely available for sale and have always been regarded as generational trophy assets that bestow great prestige and privilege,” said Michael Tay, CBRE’s head of capital markets for Singapore. “Furthermore, the majority of hotels in Orchard are sizable with more than 200 keys, making such boutique offerings scarce.”
Located five minutes’ walk from Orchard Road in Singapore’s premier shopping district, the project is in an area that has become a hub for urban renewal, with LaSalle Investment Management and private equity firm TE Capital currently redeveloping the VisionCrest Commercial Building a few blocks away.
First Location in APAC
The seven-storey Mama Shelter Singapore Orchard has 40 metres (44 yards) of frontage along Killiney Road in posh District 9, occupying a 13,148 square foot land parcel and spanning a total floor area of 39,628 square feet (3,682 square metres).
A rendering shows Mama Shelter Singapore Orchard’s low-key design
The project sits next door to Lendlease’s S$3 billion redevelopment of Singtel’s Comcentre headquarters and roughly five minutes by foot from Somerset MRT station.
The freehold hotel is to be operated by French hospitality giant Accor’s Ennismore division under the quirky Mama Shelter brand founded by the Trigano family behind Club Med.
Due to open to guests in the first quarter of 2025, the hotel is the first Asia Pacific location for Mama Shelter, which touts a combination of urban design, affordability and “a touch of new-wave glamour”. The brand counts 18 hotels and 2,600 rooms worldwide, mostly in Europe.
The indicative price for Mama Shelter Singapore Orchard translates to S$1.7 million ($1.3 million) per key and S$4,921 ($3,618) per square foot of floor area. Lucrum had put the project on the market at an asking price of S$155 million in 2019, but ultimately failed to find a buyer.
“We expect this investment opportunity to appeal greatly and garner strong interest from a wide range of investors such as family offices, boutique real estate funds, local companies and high-net-worth individuals,” Tay said.
Little Red Dot’s Hotspot
Orchard Road continues to be a redevelopment hotspot, with an ageing building near the Four Seasons and Pan Pacific Orchard hotels launched for sale last week at a reserve price of S$438 million ($321 million).
Delfi Orchard, an 11-storey retail and apartment property majority owned by City Developments Ltd, is the target of a tender for collective sale. The potential buyer is entitled to develop a commercial tower of up to 131,186 square feet on the site at the corner of Orchard Road and Claymore Roads.
The Singapore government has been encouraging developers to knock down ageing buildings along the well-known shopping strip, with the Urban Redevelopment Authority in 2020 having announced a master plan to rejuvenate the area into a “green Oasis in the city”, which investors expect to boost property values.
Despite that encouragement, Bright Ruby Resources, an investment firm backed by Chinese billionaire Du Shuanghua, earlier this month backed out of a S$908 million deal to buy the Far East Shopping Centre, located one block down Orchard Road from Delfi Orchard, when it failed to win approval for incentives which would have allowed it to supersize the property.