Setting aside 101ha of prime land in the heart of Singapore’s new downtown for Gardens by the Bay was not an easy decision, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said last night.
The land could have been used for far more valuable commercial and residential developments, but planners believed in the value of an iconic green space - one that would be a key part of the new downtown in Marina Bay South and Singapore’s answer to New York’s Central Park and London’s Hyde Park.
Speaking at the opening of the attraction, at which he unveiled a silver plaque, he said that with the city-state being so densely populated, such green lungs were needed.
‘In fact, the more developed a city Singapore is, the more important it is for us to have such peaceful oases amid our tropical concrete and expressways, in order to give us emotional well-being and a sense of belonging.’
He was addressing 700 civil servants, corporate partners and students who were at the Flower Dome conservatory for the opening ceremony. He had earlier gone on a tour of the Gardens, taking in the sights from the OCBC Skyway, a 128m-long aerial walkway linking two 42m-tall Supertrees.
Mr Lee had announced the idea for the Gardens in his National Day Rally speech in 2005.
By far the largest and most expensive endeavour undertaken by the National Parks Board, the facility is made up of three gardens and is the latest manifestation of the city-in-a-garden vision.
The first and largest of the gardens, Bay South, took five years and $1 billion to build. It has two cooled conservatories that are among the largest in the world. The other gardens, Bay East and Bay Central, will be developed later. A global design competition in 2005 was won by British firm Grant Associates, which came up with the idea for the Supertrees.
A construction boom fuelled by developments like Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa resulted in the cost of the Gardens going up by 35 per cent.
After some rethinking, the number of Supertrees was halved to 18, and excavation work for a full basement carpark forgone.
The Gardens’ chief executive Tan Wee Kiat said the project had its share of problems, chief of which was that it was a full-fledged garden built on reclaimed land - and in a short time at that.
Yesterday, Mr Lee singled out former national development minister Mah Bow Tan for pushing for the project when he was in charge.
‘He saw value in having Gardens by the Bay right in the city, a value beyond enhancing the price of the rest of the land in Marina Bay,’ said Mr Lee.
Speaking to The Straits Times later, Mr Mah said no one would think of putting a commercial value on New York’s Central Park. He said: ‘Can you imagine if someone said, ‘We should have built houses on Hyde Park’? Or ‘Let’s turn Botanic Gardens into good-class bungalows’?’
National Parks Board chief Poon Hong Yuen said he expects the new Gardens to attract five million visitors in its first year.
Guests at yesterday’s opening took many pictures of the lit Supertrees, but the one thing that left most of them awestruck was the 30m waterfall in the Cloud Forest conservatory. ‘Wow!’ was the word that escaped many lips.
