Jurong Lake area set for major makeover

Jurong Lake area set for major makeover
By Sara Grosse | Posted: 22 January 2011 1746 hrs

SINGAPORE: The Jurong Lake area is set for a major transformation to make it attractive to residents and international visitors.

The plans include waterfront hotels, parks and playgrounds in Lakeside (comprising 220 hectares of land and 70 hectares of water body), making it a world-class leisure destination over the next 10 to 15 years.

These plans were announced on Saturday by Mr Lim Boon Heng, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office and MP for Jurong GRC.

He said that by building hotels in the Lakeside area, "we will draw a number of the people who come for their work to stay in the hotels here rather in the hotels downtown because of the beautiful scenery that they will get around the Jurong Lake. I think this will be a very good alternative and I'm sure the hotels here would give the hotels in town a run for their money."

At the same time, Mr Lim hopes that the new developments "will not create a rush" by people and push up property prices unnecessarily.

The Jurong Lake area transformation is part of the HDB's S$1b Remaking Our Heartland (ROH) project announced earlier this month that also includes Hougang and East Coast.

The upgrade of the Jurong Lake area will focus on new homes, rejuvenating its town centre, improving connectivity and providing more choices for outdoor recreation.

Residents can look forward to a new mall in 2012 to be called JCube.

With about 26,000 square metres of commercial space, the new mall will have five levels of retail space and an Olympic-size ice-skating rink.

The Jurong Lake area will also have an integrated healthcare hub comprising the 700-bed Jurong General Hospital and the 286-bed Jurong Community Hospital.

These are slated for completion in 2014 and 2015 respectively.

To improve connectivity, pedestrians and cyclists can look forward to a network of park connectors to be developed over the next five years from Bukit Batok to Jurong East MRT station.

The network will be at least 24 kilometres in length and link residents to the MRT stations and key town centres as well as nature reserves.

Two new parks will be created in the vacant space near the Jurong East MRT station and Toh Guan.

The Jurong Lake area will also see two new public housing sites, where about 1,200 new flats will be rolled out over the next five years.

Residents' homes will be given a facelift through upgrading programmes. These are Home Improvement Programme (HIP), Lift Upgrading Programme (LUP) and Neighbourhood Renewal Programme (NRP).

Those who need more information or who want to give feedback can visit an exhibition next to Jurong East MRT station on 22 January, 5pm- 9pm, 23-26 January, 10am-9pm.

- CNA/ir

- wong chee tat :)