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Image: Christopher Chitty
A 50,000 sq ft. office space at Marina One will reportedly house the regional and global headquarters of a new consortium comprising Japan’s three major shipping lines, according to The Business Times.
Joint-venture firm Ocean Network Express is said to have agreed to lease 1½ floors at Marina One in a rental transaction negotiated by Knight Frank.
The company is a tie-up between the shipping operations of Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL), Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha (K Line) and Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (NYK Line). It includes their terminal businesses across the globe, excluding those in Japan.
Macquarie Bank, which is currently occupying Marina Bay Financial Centre Tower 2, is also understood to be in advanced negotiations to rent a 50,000 sq ft. office space at Marina One.
The integrated project’s two new office towers are nearly completed and 70 percent of its Grade-A office space spanning 1.88 million sq ft. has been pre-leased. Marina One is being built by M+S, a joint venture between Malaysia’s Khazanah Nasional and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings.
Moreover, some experts think that the healthy demand for office space at Marina One has led to an uptick in premium office rents at Marina Bay.
According to JLL’s estimates, monthly gross effective rents of Grade-A office space in Singapore’s central business district edged up by 0.6 percent in Q2 2017 to SGD8.49 psf following a drop of 19.6 percent in the last two years. The growth was led by the Marina Bay submarket, where rent increased by 1.3 percent to SGD9.51 psf.
“The turnaround in office rents came on the back of the firming of rents in better-quality buildings with higher occupancy rates, as well as the continued inching up of the take-up rates of recently and soon-to-be completed projects above the psychological barrier of 50 percent,” said JLL Research Head Tay Huey Ying.
“Additionally, as some occupiers have committed to space in new projects ahead of the lease expiry in their existing premises, the staggered return of space to the market has mitigated pressure on landlords to lower rental expectations to maintain occupancy.”
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