HarbourFront is a waterfront district situated in southern
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
. Whilst HarbourFront's boundaries are ambiguous, its location is roughly represented on the
URA's Master Plan as a subzone called Maritime Square, located within the Bukit Merah Planning Area.
Main thoroughfares in HarbourFront include Keppel Way and Telok Blangah Road. Notable buildings in the vicinity include
HarbourFront Centre
Harbourfront Centre is a key cultural organization on the waterfront of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated at 235 Queens Quay West. Established as a crown corporation in 1972 by the Government of Canada to create a waterfront park, it became ...
,
Singapore Cruise Centre
The Singapore Cruise Centre ( abbrev: SCC; Chinese: 新加坡邮轮中心) is a cruise terminal located in the south of Singapore next to HarbourFront Centre in the vicinity of HarbourFront and in Keppel Harbour, near HarbourFront MRT statio ...
,
St James Power Station and
VivoCity
VivoCity is a shopping mall located in the HarbourFront precinct of Bukit Merah, Singapore. It is the largest shopping mall in Singapore, with of net lettable area and of gross floor area spread over a three-storey shopping complex and t ...
. Maritime Square is currently being redeveloped into a new business and lifestyle hub.
Etymology
The area was originally known as Seah Im but was also referred to as Jardine Steps. After the
Port of Singapore
The Port of Singapore refers to the collective facilities and terminals that conduct maritime trade and handles Singapore's harbours and shipping. It has been ranked as the top maritime capital of the world since 2015. Currently the world's se ...
expanded, it was developed into Maritime Square and later renamed as HarbourFront.
The present-day appellation, HarbourFront, was coined in the 2000s to give the area a more upmarket feel.
History
HarbourFront was once close to the southernmost point of the main island of Singapore, until
land reclamation
Land reclamation, usually known as reclamation, and also known as land fill (not to be confused with a waste landfill), is the process of creating new land from oceans, seas, riverbeds or lake beds. The land reclaimed is known as reclamati ...
in
Tanjong Pagar
Tanjong Pagar (New Rumi Spelling, alternatively spelled ''Tanjung Pagar'') is a historic district located within the Central Business District in Singapore, straddling the Outram, Singapore, Outram Planning Area and the Downtown Core under the ...
and
Tuas
Tuas is a planning area located within the West Region of Singapore. It is bounded by the Western Water Catchment to its north, Pioneer to its east and the Straits of Johor to its west. Tuas also shares a maritime boundary with the Western Isl ...
. Its location in the sheltered waters of
Keppel Harbour
Keppel Harbour (; ms, Pelabuhan Keppel), also called the Keppel Channel and formerly New Harbour, is a stretch of water in Singapore between the mainland and the southern islands of Pulau Brani and Sentosa (formerly Pulau Blakang Mati). Its natur ...
helped the area to thrive as a commercial area adjacent to
Keppel Shipyards, particularly with the building of the former World Trade Centre in 1978. Singapore's first major Exhibitions and Conventions venue, the World Trade Centre Exhibition Complex, was subsequently built beside the World Trade Centre, and also served as a transport node with ferries to Sentosa and other regional destinations such as
Batam
Batam is the largest city in the province of Riau Islands, Indonesia. The city administrative area covers three main islands of Batam, Rempang, and Galang (collectively called Barelang), as well as several small islands. Batam Island is the cor ...
. The
Singapore Cruise Centre
The Singapore Cruise Centre ( abbrev: SCC; Chinese: 新加坡邮轮中心) is a cruise terminal located in the south of Singapore next to HarbourFront Centre in the vicinity of HarbourFront and in Keppel Harbour, near HarbourFront MRT statio ...
opened in 1991 in HarbourFront as the country's first international cruise terminal.
Massive redevelopment in the area after the closure of the shipyard subsequently led to the name HarbourFront being coined in the early 2000s to refer to the immediate vicinity of the World Trade Centre, which was in the midst of a major refurbishment project. Relaunched as
HarbourFront Centre
Harbourfront Centre is a key cultural organization on the waterfront of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated at 235 Queens Quay West. Established as a crown corporation in 1972 by the Government of Canada to create a waterfront park, it became ...
, the former World Trade Centre also has its neighbouring Exhibition Complex demolished to make way for
VivoCity
VivoCity is a shopping mall located in the HarbourFront precinct of Bukit Merah, Singapore. It is the largest shopping mall in Singapore, with of net lettable area and of gross floor area spread over a three-storey shopping complex and t ...
, the upgrading of the Cable Car Towers (old Jardine Steps Station on top the old PSA Tower) and the construction of two new office blocks adjacent to it. Transportation into the area was vastly improved with the opening of the
HarbourFront MRT station
HarbourFront MRT station is an underground Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) interchange station in Singapore. The termini of the North East line (NEL) and Circle line (CCL), the station serves the HarbourFront area and Sentosa. Surrounding retail an ...
and extension of the
HarbourFront Bus Interchange. Also, the new
monorail
A monorail (from "mono", meaning "one", and "rail") is a railway in which the track consists of a single rail or a beam.
Colloquially, the term "monorail" is often used to describe any form of elevated rail or people mover. More accurately, ...
link to Sentosa, the
Sentosa Express
The Sentosa Express is a monorail line connecting Sentosa island to HarbourFront on the Singapore mainland. It was built at a cost of Singapore dollar, S$140 million to replace the previous Sentosa Monorail. Development began in June 2003 and c ...
has been completed and opened on 15 January 2007. The HarbourFront station of the
Circle line had opened on 8 October 2011.
A new six-storey office building is also in the works as a new addition to the HarbourFront Office Park. The new site is known as the HarbourFront Merrill Lynch, which is a six-storey building and will be entirely occupied by American bank
Merrill Lynch
Merrill (officially Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated), previously branded Merrill Lynch, is an American investment management and wealth management division of Bank of America. Along with BofA Securities, the investment bank ...
with a total area of . Another office development is being planned on the site of the current
SPI Building. Furthermore, a
residential
A residential area is a land used in which housing predominates, as opposed to industrial and commercial areas.
Housing may vary significantly between, and through, residential areas. These include single-family housing, multi-family residen ...
development is possible in the future
The Singapore Cruise Centre would be expanded to accommodate over 6 million passengers by 2010.
References
External links
The HarbourFront Precinct MasterplanThe HarbourFront Precinct Masterplan
{{Singapore border crossings, state=autocollapse
Places in Singapore
Bukit Merah
Redeveloped ports and waterfronts in Singapore
Shopping districts and streets in Singapore