Amazon said to ink big office lease at IOI Central Boulevard Towers
SINGAPORE (BLOOMBERG) - Amazon.com has signed a lease for about 369,000 sq ft at the new IOI Central Boulevard Towers in Singapore, the Business Times reported, without citing where it got the information from.
The tech giant's lease comprises both office floors of 70,000 sq ft each in the development's podium, and all nine office levels of 25,400 sq ft each in the East Tower, according to the report. The development, located in the Marina Bay area next to Downtown MRT station, is expected to be completed in October 2023.
Tech companies continue to chip away at the dominance of banks in Singapore's Central Business District, with Amazon last year taking over three floors of office space from Citigroup at Asia Square Tower 1, where it is now the anchor tenant with 100,000 sq ft.
The tech giant's latest reported move also adds to a trend of global firms bulking up their presence in Singapore to manage or expand their Asian operations, particularly as the appeal of Hong Kong diminishes.
ByteDance, owner of TikTok, was in negotiations to lease some 120,000 sq ft to 130,000 sq ft of space at Capital Tower in Robinson Road, formerly occupied by JP Morgan, as the Chinese tech giant expands in Singapore, BT reported in April.
ByteDance is reportedly already leasing about 130,000 sq ft at One Raffles Quay’s South Tower, some flexible space at its North Tower and 100,000 sq ft at Guoco Tower above Tanjong Pagar MRT station.
As the maiden big-name anchor tenant at IOI Central Boulevard Towers, Amazon may be paying a gross effective monthly rental of around $10 per sq ft (psf), while Malaysia-listed developer IOI Properties Group is said to be targeting about $12 psf to $14 psf for the project, the report added, citing market speculation.
Grade A office rents in the CBD may cross their pre-pandemic peak by the third quarter of this year, JLL Singapore said last month. The rents rose for the fifth straight quarter to $10.74 psf per month in the April to June quarter, just 0.6 per cent shy of the pre-pandemic peak of $10.81.
Marina Bay saw the sharpest quarter-on-quarter rent growth at 3.4 per cent, among the four CBD sub-markets tracked by JLL, due to its “relatively new and good quality” office developments.