The business park is now rapidly emptying out, dealing a blow to the Singapore government’s meticulous urban planning and efforts to get foreign businesses to expand their regional operations in the Southeast Asian island nation. Overall vacancy rates across 10 commercial properties there tracked by property consultancy Cushman & Wakefield have more than doubled in the past three years to nearly 40%.
Singapore’s commercial real estate market has been a standout amid a global downturn, with one major exception.
Just nine miles from the gleaming skyscrapers that crowd the country’s Central Business District sits a 71-hectare (175-acre), billion-dollar example of the city-state’s push to create alternative business hubs. Changi Business Park, dubbed the “CBD of the East” was a big draw for tech giants including International Business Machines Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Global banks from JPMorgan Chase & Co to Citigroup Inc have also situated their back-end staff there.
