Three vacant State properties will be made available in the first half of this year under the extended RentDirect scheme, which for the first time includes properties with longer tenures of up to 9 years.
One of the three properties, 95 Tampines Road which was formerly used as a school cum kindergarten, will be made available on 24 March 2006. The property can be used as a health and fitness centre, spa, yoga studio, fencing school, martial arts school or archery school. Another two properties, 70 Martaban Road (former facilities of the old Tan Tock Seng hospital) and 14.5km Punggol Road (former Punggol MCH Clinic) will be made available next month.
In March 2005, the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) launched the RentDirect scheme which allows businesses to make direct rental offers to SLA for vacant State buildings. A key feature of the scheme is that if SLA does not receive any acceptable offer after the 2-week period once a property has been placed on the scheme, we will then evaluate subsequent offers received on a first-come-first-served basis.
The properties which were placed on the scheme last year were confined to those with short tenures of 3 years or less. SLA is extending the RentDirect scheme to include properties with tenures of more than 3 years up to a maximum of 9 years that have not been taken up in past tenders.
The extended RentDirect scheme seeks to inject flexibility and introduce more choices to start-ups, entrepreneurs and organisations, from those who are looking for temporary space and need to start up their operations quickly to those who are prepared to renovate the properties and have a longer tenure. This initiative is in line with SLA’s mission to put vacant State properties to interim use to meet the diverse social and economic needs of Singapore.
More properties will be placed on the scheme as and when they become available.

Issued by:
Singapore Land Authority
24 March 2006