B.K. Sidhu The Star 8 Dec 12;
TAN Sri Lim Kang Hoo was beaming with excitement to show off his grand plan for the makeover of Johor Baru when StarBizWeek met him for an interview recently.
He had just got the plans approved for the makeover of the central business district (CBD) and the eastern side of the tip of Johor Baru (JB). The makeover of the CDB will change the face of several streets such as Jalan Wong Ah Fook, Jalan Segget, Jalan Ibrahim, and Jalan Meldrum which now house buildings that have been abandoned for a long time.
In his opinion, and that of others, JB has not recovered from the property glut after the 1997 Asian economic crisis.
On the eastern side or the Tebrau coast, he wants to create a lifestyle haven similar to that of the Gold Coast in Australia. He is hoping to attract expatriates who are going to work at the oil and gas hub that is taking shape in Pengerang to reside at the Tebrau coast.
Combined with the Danga Bay development which is located at the western side of the southern tip of JB, he has over 1,619ha that will be developed into an waterfront city fronting Singapore over several years.
The land is parked under Iskandar Waterfront Holdings Sdn Bhd (IWH), which is the master developer of parts of JB city. He owns 60% of IWH via Credence Resources Sdn Bhd and his partner in this venture is the Johore state government via Kumpulan Prasarana Rakyat Johor (KPRJ), which holds the remaining 40% stake in IWH. Both EPF and Khazanah Nasional Bhd has indirect stake in IWH held via Iskandar Investments Bhd.
IWH's over 1619ha forms part of Iskandar Malaysia's 221,707ha and Iskandar is being built into a metropolis of the south. With the developments taking shape in Iskandar from theme parks to an edu-city and a water front city, investors are trickling in.
Singapore has shown its willingness to participate in the development but there is a need to really change the CBD into a more vibrant city to attract more investors from across the causeway and other countries. The other developer of plots of land in Iskandar Malaysia is Khazanah.
“Fifteen years ago no one wanted to lend me a dollar and people used to a laugh at me when I showed the concept of creating JB into a waterfront city like Hong Kong-Shenzhen. They thought I was crazy. But now, they are same ones telling me that JB is going to be another Hong Kong-Shenzhen and I am not even talking,” he tells StarBizWeek in an interview.
This week he sealed his biggest deal yet. He sold 55 acres to one of China's biggest property developers, Country Garden Holdings Ltd, for nearly RM1bil and he says a lot more deals are in the pipeline including selling of an island made of reclaimed to an influential Singapore company. And all of IWH's land is sold on a joint venture basis except the 55 acres to Country Garden.
CBD the heritage city
Abandoned and half closed shops are a common sight at the CBD and it has become an eyesore. Some are also infested by the squatters. Some owners of the buildings and shops have migrated and to track them down has been a big challenge for Lim. He managed to trace and has bought some 50 plots in various locations, the latest being a plot of 133ha at Jalan Wong Ah Fook from an old man who had migrated and was the seventh generation owner.
This is part of the makeover process and is necessary if JB is to be turned into a waterfront city.
“You cannot be attracting investors to JB and still have squatters in the city. We need a vibrant city that has all the ingredients of a modern and world class city to be able to attract the investors,” he says, adding that when he buys over a plot that has squatters, he has to compensate and relocate them.
“We want to beautify the city, clean up the sea bed and sewerage, improve the landscape and traffic flow. There will also be a city tram and this new CDB will be themed as a heritage city,” he says. The makeover of the city is the state government's project and IWH has mandated to see it through.
The city will be divided up into sections where there will be food and beverage areas, China town, Little India, a Malay street, and night-life attractions.
“We are doing all this for the people in the state and that will create economic activity and at the same time we want to attract some of the Johoreans who have migrated to return and participate in the economic activity in their state.
“We will also put up a city college, a medical related college, service apartments, budget hotels, convert old heritage buildings into boutique hotels and also do up the streets. Jalan Wong Ah Fook will be turned into a pedestrian street and phase one which includes the redevelopment of Jalan Wong Ah Fook should be ready by mid- or end-2014,” he says.
Work on beautification will begin in the first quarter of 2013 and the Johor state government will dish out tenders for the beautification of the CBD. It will also get involved in the cleaning and reclaiming of Sungai Segget, right now has the indignation of being labelled one of the smelliest rivers.
To develop the area into a CBD, he says options will be given to the existing land and shop owners to follow designs that have been approved and keep their shops open.
“We can work out joint ventures with them or they can sell it to us or develop themselves. Our approach is very friendly. What we want is to create economic activity and attract tourists and Malaysians into JB,” he adds.
For the beautification of the CBD the state government will invest RM200mil and an additional RM200mil will be invested by the Federal Government for the cleaning of Sungai Segget and putting up a new sewerage treatment plant.
The east-west side
The next thing on his plate after developing certain plots of land in Danga Bay is the Tebrau Coast. Danga Bay will be developed into a premier waterfront destination with features such as a cruise ship terminal, marina, fisherman's wharf and tower blocks to house commercial offices, hotels, exhibition and convention centres, and residential properties.
“We were asked to do a master plan for the eastern corridor and now we have obtained the approvals. It is only right to now tackle the east side after we have developed some parts of the west side (Danga Bay) and are also going to begin works on the CBD,” he says.
Tebrau Coast will replicate the Gold Coast model where there will be high rise buildings comprising apartments, hotels, commercial buildings and also retail outlets.
“We will be working with the Australian Walker Group on this over a 81ha site. The lifestyle product in Gold Coast is selling like hot cakes and we want the same concept here.
“We also have a joint venture with DiJaya Corp to develop the land over 81ha there,” he adds. All these developments will be built over 15 years.
There are several rivers in the Tebrau Coast that will need to be cleaned and land reclaimed. They include Sungai Plentong, Sungai Lunchoo, Sungai Reko and Sungai Tebrau.
Lim is known to have the expertise to reclaim land and as a result of that he has managed to grow the landbank of IWH to over 1619ha. But that acerage also includes the land that IWH has got after taking control of Tebrau Teguh Bhd.
With him buying more plots of land and with the reclamation work underway, it will be no surprise if IWH's acerage increases to over 2023ha.
“Half of our land in Danga Bay has been reclaimed. It used to be a swamp area and that is why the cost is high. We have reclaimed 324ha of land. We have a proven track record of reclaiming land and now we are going to do the same at the Tebrau coast. We are starting all over again,” he says.
Of the 1619ha, half of it is at Danga Bay. The Tebrau coast comprise 405ha of which 162ha has been sold thus far.
Some of the ongoing projects at the 1619ha owned by IWH include the RM500mil Azea Residences by a Singapore group, the RM105mil Plazzo Hotel & Serviced Suites by Waz Lian Group, RM20mil Tune Hotel project, Dijaya Corp Bhd is investing to build a high-end mixed development project that will have a gross development value (GDV) of about RM5bil. Burnsfield is building retail and commercial buildings that will have a GDV of about RM4bil. The Country Garden project will have a GDV of RM18bil.
Avoiding the glut
The deal with Country Garden took four months to conclude but some others are taking their time because some companies have longer evaluation and approval process than others. He is in talks with several parties, some of them are GLCs and that requires government approval.
But what he is excited about is the sale of a man-made island in the east side to a Singapore party. There are other investors from Singapore who are interested in the fisherman's wharf, which is one of the 10 projects in Danga Bay.
“They (the influential Singapore party) are haggling for a lower price,” he says.
But there are other Singapore parties looking at different parcels and even Country Gardens wants to buy more land in Danga Bay.
“The Indonesians are looking to buy some land to create lifestyle projects,” he adds.
While he wants a variety of investors, he is also vary that if they cannot sell their high rise commercial buildings, apartments or commercial units, it would create another glut and that is something he wants to avoid.
Having learnt the experience of the 1997 crisis, he says land will only be sold in stages so that there are takers for whatever is being developed. “We have to ensure each developer has product differentiation so that demand for their products will always be there and this prevents a glut,” he says.
When he started out, Lim bought land for RM1.50 psf to RM3 psf. Now the same land is being sold at RM300 psf to RM500 psf depending on location. He can't say how much more the land will appreciate given the total development at Iskandar Malaysia, which comprise of over 221,707ha.
“I can't say how much more it will go up or what is the valuations are now because we have not valued the land but we have commissioned someone to do it recently,” he says.
He adds that “for now we are still selling at early bird prices but eventually we would have to tender the land and sell it to the highest bidder.”
“What we are creating is an international waterfront city. The buildings will all be high rise as just to clean up the rivers and reclaim the land we have to buy sand from Pengerang and that costs us a lot of money, hence our land is expansive.
“There is no way we can do landed property or terrace houses on such a land because the cost will be too expensive and nobody will buy a terrace or semi-D for RM10mil. That is why we are modelling our land on Hongkong-Shenzhen and this development will take years because waterfront cities are not built in a day. They can take decades for full realisation,” he says.
Lim also wants to work with developers from different countries, say China, India, Europe, Australia, Indonesia and Singapore so that when there is a problem in their home country, not every developer is affected and the overall development can go on.
Future plans of master developer
The Star 8 Dec 12;
On a free day Tan Sri Lim Kang Hoo takes a ride on his helicopter to check out vacant land that he could get his hands on to increase Iskandar Waterfront Holdings Sdn Bhd (IWH) landbank. He also checks out land titles of abandon shophouses and buildings to trace the owners so those sites which house squatters can be redeveloped by IWH, which is the master developer of parts of JB city. He met up with StarBizWeek's B.K. Sidhu recently and here are excerpts of the interview:
The market is saying IWH and Khazanah Nasional Bhd are competing for the same investors. Your comment?
There is no competition as our products are different. Talk about competition, our land is mostly reclaimed land and theirs is inland land. Khazanah and the state government are building catalytic projects to attract local and foreign investors. Over the last two years, there has been a rush to the corridor and since Iskandar Malaysia was launched nearly six years ago, we have seen progress.
What we are creating is an urban city and Nusajaya is mostly landed and semi-D units, theme parks, edu-city, Pinewoods studio, industries and so on. Ours is more open to a lot of multinational companies and we would like the MNCs to come here as the cost of their 2 to 3 year rental in Singapore is the cost of owning a building here. We cater to a lifestyle concept that will attract them. So there is no competition as we are focusing more on high rise buildings.
When will the tram and MRT be ready and will IWH be involved?
The tram will only be there once we get into the second phase of the CBD development as we need a bigger area for the tram to run on and it should be completed by 2016. As for the MRT, the consultants have been appointed but we are not sure of the location as this is being done by the Federal Government.
IWH has seen a boost in its landbank from 486ha just 10 months ago to over 1619ha now. Did you get the land from the state government?
Apart from the take over of Tebrau Teguh which had some land, we have also bought land via bank auctions, took over failed and abandoned projects and from Danaharta. We did not get any land from the government, instead we are buying land. We continue to look for more land and any party that cannot develop the land in the city centre can talk to us. We have also bought about 20ha of land in the CBD which is land owned by people that are fifth to 7th generation and some of these land have been infested with squatters. .
So there is no land from the government.
IWH is hoping that Johoreans who have migrated will return to the state. Are they buying anything?
Amazingly 60% of units and plots of land sold are to Johoreans, 25% are to Singaporean and 15% foreigners.
It is also wrong to say Johoreans cannot afford property in Johor. They just did not have the opportunity as earlier developers were not focusing on lifestyle products like ones in KL and Singapore. The demand for lifestyle product is now (given the influence) from Singapore. Now that there is greater demand for lifestyle products, purchases are picking up.
Who's the next big buyer of land after China's Country Garden purchase of 55 acres of land in Danga Bay?
We are in talks with several parties, some are GLCs and they need government approvals. At least a few hundred acres are under negotiations but at some point we will stop selling when we have achieved the target because we do not want to create a property glut. It is a very focused approach that we have in terms of releasing land for development so that all what is built gets absorbed.
We have learnt as JB experienced the biggest glut from the 1997 Asian economic crisis and it has not fully recovered.
A listing for IWH and REITS in the future?
IWH is growing and there will be recurring income over the next 15 years, we are assured of that. When we sell land we buy more land and with that our acerage grows. All this is done together with the state government agency, KPRJ. So naturally, we will be looking to list IWH and definitely we are looking at next year for the listing though we need sometime to make submissions. We also have not appointed our investment bankers. It will be on Bursa Malaysia and we may even explore a dual listing.
We have one division working on REITS.
What's the plan for the 127ha at Desaru?
We will construct a lifestyle living concept, resort and hotel there as there will be a lot of people who will come because the oil and gas hub is taking shape in Pengerang. They will need housing and we want to attract expatriates.
Again, this land was purchased from Danaharta and not given by the government.
Why you think reclaiming land is better?
When we started 15 years ago. Four contractors ran away because they could not reclaim land at Danga Bay. I decided to buy my own equipment and reclaim the land. We have the expertise and why let the land be soaked in the sea when we can reclaim it and built something on it? Look at Singapore. They have reclaimed a lot of land and expanded their coastline.
