A tale of two buildings: The rise of Block 71 and the decline of block 67

Block 71 stands out with its fresh paint and newly installed glass panels, within a largely ageing industrial estate. Photo: Fang Shihan

Freshly painted bubblegum stripes sweep down the right hand corner of Block 71, while cartoons adorn the walls on the first floor. Color? Wall art? Creativity? These are things you do not usually see at the otherwise drab Ayer Rajah industrial estate.

But Block 71 is no ordinary building.

Rescued from the bulldozers by the Media Development Authority (MDA), which leased the seven-storey building from national industrial infrastructure developer JTC Corporation, it was relaunched in April 2011 as “Mediapolis Phase Zero”, an incubation centre and prototype of Mediapolis — the future media hub of Singapore.

Spanning an area of 19 hectares (about 26 football fields), Mediapolis is still largely under construction. But the transformation of the formerly sleepy area is already in the works. National broadcaster Mediacorp has already announced its move to Mediapolis by 2015, where they will occupy a 1.5 hectare complex while property management firm Ascendas announced in February last year the construction of a 10-storey building to be developed at a cost of SGD 60M (USD 49M).

Walking out from the newly-built One North subway station, to the mostly pallid Ayer Rajah industrial estate which at present remains home to a large number of small and medium enterprises, three food courts, a minimart, and one medical centre, one is reminded of how quickly industrial landscapes can change in a country that leaped from the third world to first in less than half a century.

Today, Block 71 is home to more than 80 technology-related companies including venture funds, incubators, technology startups and video game firms. A far cry from its previous existence as an abandoned building.

A hotbed for startups

While some startups say that the dreary surroundings at the industrial estate inhibit creativity, the occupants of Block 71 maintain that it is the ecosystem within the building that has created the buzz and dynamism so necessary for innovation.

“Creativity is being in the environment, and in the community,” said Elisha Ong, co-founder of Burpple (view profile), a smartphone app that functions as a social food journal. He had just returned from a market research trip in Beijing and was wolfing down a late lunch of chicken rice from the food court downstairs (not good enough to be Burppled, unfortunately) during the interview.

That, and the low costs of setting up shop there. Burpple shares a unit with Anafore, a firm that makes the customer referral program web application Referral Candy. Anafore pays a basic rent of approximately SGD2,400 a month. A similar sized space at a more central location like Duxton Road would cost more than double that.

Burpple is one of the many startups that has benefited from Block 71’s cheap rental fees. Photo: Terence Lee

Rent-free spaces are available in the building as well. NUS Enterprise manages Plug-In@Blk71, a co-working area for startups in validation mode to “hot desk” for approximately three months. It currently houses about 40 startups apart from the 80-odd companies in the building