1A Short Street will soon host newly arrived foreign healthcare workers (Image: The Assembly Place)
Singapore’s The Assembly Place continues to ramp up its presence in the city-state’s rental residential market with joint ventures backed by the co-living investor and operator winning government contracts to renovate and manage three hostels for healthcare workers.
Together with foreign worker accommodation specialist TS Group, the company led by entrepreneur Eugene Lim has won a trio of tenders with a unit of Singapore’s Ministry of Health to design, renovate and operate existing facilities into accommodation for an estimated 1,180 nurses and other healthcare workers newly arrived from overseas, the partners announced last week.
With the set of contracts being announced within days of The Assembly Place (TAP) confirming plans to convert the residential section of The Serene Centre in Bukit Timah into a co-living facility, Lim in a statement highlighted the shared amenities and communal elements of the planned projects as key to providing Singapore homes for foreign healthcare workers.
“Building a community is a big part of TAP’s DNA,” said Lim, who founded and serves as CEO of the company. “We know that many of them are leaving their home countries for the first time, so it is very important to create a safe and comfortable environment for them.”
Welcoming New Nurses
Among the three projects is a former student hostel at 1A Short Street in Rochor district, with the joint venture also appointed to repurpose a pair of school facilities at 107 Circuit Road in Geylang and 36, 38 Teck Whye Crescent in the northwestern region.
Eugene Lim, founder and CEO of The Assembly Place
Under the terms of the tenders, all three properties will be converted into hostels with communal facilities, catering to newly arrived nurses and allied health professionals employed at public health institutions, with the trio among five projects that Singapore’s Ministry of Health launched for tender in August of last year.
Expected to house around 200 to 600 workers for each location, the facilities will serve as temporary accommodation while the newly arrived professionals transition to market housing. The value and terms of the winning tenders were not disclosed.
Slated to open during the second half of this year, the Short Street facility is a 10-storey block previously operated by SGX-listed worker and student accommodation specialist Centurion Corp as a student hostel. Centurion operated the former 400-bed facility from 2015 until its eight-year lease term expired last year.
The two other locations, 107 Circuit Road, the former site of Kong Hwa School, as well as 36- 38 Teck Whye Crescent, which previously housed De La Salle School, will be operational in the first half of 2025.
Lim said the projects mark The Assembly Place’s first foray into accommodation for healthcare professionals and will boost his company’s portfolio to 3,000 rooms under management across more than 130 locations in the city-state.
“TAP will be involved in both the retrofitting and operations of the project, and of course, providing TAP’s signature co-living experience, which includes community events and programmes,” Lim said in response to an inquiry from Mingtiandi.
Lim’s partner, TS Group, specialises in developing and operating accommodation for foreign workers and the elderly in its home city of Singapore, as well as in Malaysia and Thailand.
Going Cross-Border
After launching the 426-bed student accommodation project, The Campus in District 15, in October through a joint venture with Apricot Capital, the family office of instant coffee king David Teo, Lim says The Assembly Place is preparing to open 10 more locations this year.
With the company having set a goal of establishing a 4,000-room portfolio before 2025, the expansion includes plans to launch a 66-room co-living hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia this quarter as the company prepares to venture beyond Singapore, with Lim having indicated in an earlier interview that The Assembly Place aims to enter two to three more markets this year beyond the Malay peninsula.
Founded in 2018, The Assembly Place currently manages units across hotels, shophouses, landed homes and individual condos, as well as purpose-built rental accommodation.
A JLL report last year ranked The Assembly Place as Singapore’s second-largest co-living operator as of mid-2023 with a 16 percent share of total units in operation, trailing SGX-listed LHN Group, which owns the Coliwoo brand.
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