Centurion to build 4,100-bed dormitory in Woodlands

SINGAPORE — Centurion, a locally-listed dormitory developer, will build a 4,100-bed facility for foreign workers in Woodlands Avenue 10 after winning a land tender by Jurong Town Corp, the company said yesterday.

The site has a 30-year lease and sits on a land area of about 102,700 sq ft. Centurion, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Westlite Dormitory, submitted the top bid of S$80.8 million in the tender, beating 13 other bidders.

Centurion Chief Executive Kong Chee Min said: “It gives us the opportunity to continue growing our workers’ accommodation portfolio in Singapore, especially since sites with long tenures for worker accommodation developments are hard to come by.”

Centurion has about 18,000 beds in Singapore. It said that with the ongoing enhancement of its existing premises, this will grow to about 23,000 by the first quarter of next year.

The successful bid will allow it to further expand the number of beds for foreign workers here to almost 28,000 when the facility is completed in 2015, it said.

The group’s total projected bed count, including those in Malaysia, will be about 54,000 in 2015 from its current 29,000, it added.

Demand for worker accommodation is expected to remain robust,said Centurion, noting that Work Permit holders in the non-domestic sector rose 5.7 per cent from 2011 to 742,500 last year while only 160,000 purpose-built beds were available in the last two years.

After the announcement yesterday, Centurion shares rose 1 per cent to close at 49 cents each.