The new Shaw Tower marks its debut, 50 years on

Had the original Shaw Tower — once a 35-storey Brutalist icon on Beach Road — still been standing, it would have been 50 years old today.

On July 6, it was announced that the new Shaw Tower has secured its temporary occupation permit (TOP). The 33-storey commercial tower at 100 Beach Road has 435,000 sq ft of Grade A office space and 21,500 sq ft of retail space.

"Its completion marks a significant milestone in the rejuvenation of the Ophir-Rochor corridor," says Richard Paine, senior adviser at Lendlease Development.

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An eight-year journey

For Alfred Yeung, general manager of Shaw Towers Realty, who has overseen the project from start to finish, it has been an eight-year journey.

It started with the announcement of redevelopment plans by Shaw Towers Realty, a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based Shaw Foundation and The Sir Run Run Shaw Charitable Trust, in August 2018. A new, updated vision was announced in 2019, and the redevelopment was officially launched in October 2020, with Lendlease appointed to manage the project. Hyundai Engineering & Construction was the main contractor, securing a $202 million contract for the redevelopment.

With construction taking place amid the pandemic, the project's completion was delayed by 12 to 18 months. "While there were changes that we had to make along the way, overall we are very pleased with the outcome," says Yeung.

Beyond sustainability

Shaw Tower is more than just a Grade A office building. "When most people talk about sustainability in new Grade A office buildings, the focus is usually on environmental sustainability, and how green the building is," says Yeung. "Obviously, this is high on the agenda, but we also see the social and economic side, and we want to provide a more holistic approach to sustainability."

A year ago, Shaw Foundation Hong Kong announced a tie-up with the National Council of Social Service (NCSS), with about 2,000 sq m (21,528 sq ft) dedicated to community spaces and services focused on mental wellness, arts and heritage.

The social services space spans levels 2 to 5. The first two floors (levels 2 and 3) are dedicated to social service agencies under NCSS, while the upper two floors (levels 4 and 5) have spaces and amenities such as meeting rooms and an auditorium, available for use by the various social services as well as other corporate tenants in the building.

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Shaw Foundation Hong Kong is also setting up a non-governmental organisation to help curate a tour that educates visitors about the history of the Beach Road area, and has commissioned the National University of Singapore to conduct the research.

QR codes will be placed along the pedestrian footpath on Beach Road. Visitors can scan the codes on their phones to learn about the area's history, following a sequence of stories as they move from one point to the next. Visitors are allowed into the building and all its public areas, including the rooftop terrace, which offers spectacular city views, says Yeung.

Plans are also underway to organise tours for school children, focused on the Shaw family legacy and the history of Beach Road, he adds.

Shaw’s cinema legacy

Beyond the artefacts on display, the building also pays tribute to the former Shaw Towers, which once housed the Prince and Jade cinemas, opened in 1976. Prince was once Singapore's largest cinema, with a seating capacity of 1,952. Its debut film was the blockbuster Jaws (1976). The Prince cinema closed in 2008.

Old Shaw film footage and movie soundtracks will be played in the building, says Yeung. "We see them as vehicles for mental wellness, especially for the elderly, and we believe these old footages would help with their memory, and slow the onset of dementia."

The Shaw family business transcends media and real estate. Brothers Run Run and Runme Shaw began their movie business in Singapore and Malaysia over a century ago, in 1924, by distributing films for their family's Shanghai-based studio. By 1926, they had officially co-established the Shaw Organisation to develop the regional market.

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Movie studios and cinemas to real estate

In 1958, they formed Shaw Brothers Studio, and three years later, they built Shaw Brothers Movietown at Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong. A movie complex spanning 46 acres (18.6ha), it was once considered the world's largest private film studio, producing over 1,000 martial arts films — the most famous of which include The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978), The One-Armed Swordsman (1967) and Five Fingers of Death (1972).

The Shaw family sold the Clear Water Bay site to Shanghai-based conglomerate Fosun Group for a total of HK$2.5 billion in two deals transacted in 2014 and 2016, according to the South China Morning Post.

It marks the Chinese group’s first residential development in Hong Kong. At a ground-breaking ceremony last month, Fosun Group said it intends to invest HK$10 billion ($1.65 billion) to redevelop the site into a residential development with 800 apartments across 40 blocks and an additional 200,000 sq ft for hotels and commercial space.

The Shaw Foundation Hong Kong, however, continues to own the redeveloped Shaw Tower on Beach Road in Singapore. Yeung has seen the rejuvenation of the Beach Road-Bugis area accelerate over the past decade. "I live just down the road, and I've witnessed the entire change taking place in the area."

Anchored by Allianz, open to SMEs

The office space is 60% leased, with anchor tenant Allianz — the German financial services, insurance, and asset management group — occupying about 78,000 sq ft, equivalent to 4.5 floors. Allianz is moving from CapitaSky at 79 Robinson Road, having previously been at the old Shaw Towers. The average floor plate at Shaw Tower ranges from 18,000 sq ft on the lower floors to 20,000 sq ft on the higher floors.

Other multinational office tenants in the building include Amsterdam-based fintech company Adyen, Paris-based biopharmaceutical and healthcare firm Sanofi, Swiss-based biopharmaceutical firm BeOne Medicines — which focuses on oncology and cancer R&D — as well as co-working space provider Industrious.

While the majority of enquiries have been for larger floor plates, Yeung says Shaw Tower also welcomes SMEs, including tech startups looking at office space in the 5,000 to 6,000 sq ft range. "We are pleased with the variety and diversity of industries that have shown interest in the building," he adds.

According to office specialist Corporate Locations' listings, asking rent at Shaw Tower is about $15 psf per month.

Next door, mixed-use development Guoco Midtown's 30-storey Grade A office tower, with 709,000 sq ft of office space, is already 100% leased, according to Singapore-listed property developer GuocoLand in its FY2025 results. The office tower opened in 2023 and is linked directly to Bugis MRT Interchange Station (on the East-West/Downtown lines).

Guoco Midtown's 50,000 sq ft of retail, F&B and lifestyle space was fully leased as at January 2024, and is connected to Shaw Tower via a sheltered overhead pedestrian bridge.

The covered pedestrian overhead bridge from Guoco Midtown to Suntec City (pictured) across Nicoll Highway links the Beach Road-Bugis area to the broader Marina Bay area (Photo: Samuel Isaac Chua/EdgeProp Singapore)

Wellness at the retail podium — and beyond

The retail and F&B spaces at Shaw Tower will be centred on a wellness theme. "We like the idea of our retail tenants being part of our community," says Yeung.

Besides being linked to Guoco Midtown, Shaw Tower is also connected to South Beach, another mixed-use development along Beach Road, jointly developed by City Developments and IOI Properties Group, which was completed in 2016.

South Beach is, in turn, linked underground to Esplanade MRT Station (Circle Line) and has a covered overhead pedestrian bridge leading to Suntec City. At Guoco Midtown, the sheltered overhead pedestrian bridge across Nicoll Highway to Suntec City opened in October 2025.

"Before Guoco Midtown and our development, there was a dichotomy between the community at Suntec City on the south of Nicoll Highway, and the Beach Road-Bugis area," says Yeung. "We certainly see our development, together with Guoco Midtown, serving most of the Beach Road area. And we also provide the link to Esplanade and the Marina Bay area through our direct connectivity to South Beach."

The Bugis precinct, which sits at the intersection of heritage and new developments, has always held onto its character, observes Lendlease’s Paine. “That makes it one of Singapore’s most distinctive neighbourhoods,” he says. “Shaw Tower builds on that legacy, creating a place designed for the future while respecting its past.”