Quayside Isle was completed in 2012 (Image: CDL)
City Developments Ltd has found a buyer for a community shopping centre on Sentosa Island as retail properties come back into vogue with investors in Singapore.
The developer controlled by tycoon Kwek Leng Beng said on Tuesday that it has agreed to sell the Quayside Isle retail property at its Sentosa Cove development to a local institutional buyer for S$97.3 million ($75.4 million), with market sources identifying the purchaser to Mingtiandi as Patrick Kho, from the family behind private property investment firm Lian Huat Group.
CDL has struck an agreement to sell the retail property on the resort island after having put Quayside Isle on the market in September at an asking price of S$111 million, with the property more than 90 percent leased at the time, according to brokerages Knight Frank and CBRE, which jointly managed the sale.
“The strong investor interest we received for Quayside Isle and the sale outcome reaffirms continued investor demand for high-quality, income-generating assets,” CDL group chief executive Sherman Kwek said in a statement. “This divestment, which sees us exiting at a 2.6 percent cap rate, aligns with our disciplined capital recycling focus, enabling us to unlock value while maintaining a prudent and balanced approach to capital management.”
Selling Sentosa
With Quayside Isle spanning 44,121 square feet (4,099 square metres) of net lettable area, CDL is selling the property at the equivalent of S$2,205 per square foot, with 80 years remaining on the tenure for the 89,683 square foot site.
Sherman Kwek, chief executive of City Developments Ltd (Image: CDL)
Tenants in the two-storey, waterfront property include a mix of food and beverage operators and the Quayside Isle Preparatory School, primarily catering to residents on the island.\
The shopping centre forms the retail component of Quayside Collection, a CDL mixed-use project which also includes The Residences at W Sentosa and the W Singapore – Sentosa Cove hotel. CDL sold the W Hotel to CDL Hospitality Trusts – a REIT under its management – for S$324 million in a deal which closed in 2020. The company continues to sell units in the Residences at W Singapore, disposing of 58 in 2024, to bring its sales in the 203-unit project to 96 in total.
“Our vision for the rare waterfront site was to create a distinctive lifestyle precinct for the Sentosa Cove community,” Sherman Kwek said. “Over the past decade, Quayside Isle has evolved into a vibrant upscale destination, achieving strong performance with stable occupancy and a curated mix of well-established, long-term tenants.”
The Quayside Isle transaction is CDL’s eighth major asset sale this year, with the company having sold its 50.1 percent stake in South Beach to Malaysia’s IOI Properties Group at a valuation for the mixed-use project of S$2.75 billion, in a deal first announced in June.
In September the company closed on the sale of Piccadilly Galleria, the retail podium in its Piccadilly Grand project in Farrer Park, for S$65.46 million, as well as disposing of a set of industrial units.
Outside of Singapore, CDL has sold off a pair of hotels and an apartment project in the US, and an Osaka hotel to bring its total divestments this year to S$2 billion, including Quayside Isle.
The company expects this latest sale to be completed in the first quarter of 2026.
Shopping for Malls
CDL announced the The Quayside Isle deal just two weeks after Cuscaden Peak Investments said that it had agreed to sell The Clementi Mall in western Singapore to Chinese-backed investment firm Elegant Group for S$809 million.
That deal came after Elegant Group in September agreed to buy the Kinex shopping centre in eastern Singapore’s Geylang area from UOL Group for S$375 million.
Sources have confirmed to Mingtiandi that investors are currently in due diligence for purchases of three more Singapore shopping centres as a more than two-thirds reduction in the city-state’s benchmark interest rates this year has helped to rekindle the commercial property market.
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