East Singapore seems to be rather popular with our readers, given the number of requests we have had for tours of the area. To date, we’ve seen Bedok Walk, Siglap, Frankel Avenue, Eastwood and Opera Estate, just to name a few. However, I noticed that all our tours have been North of Upper East Coast Road, so this week I decided to head over to Elliot Road (which is South of Upper East Coast Road) for a look.
Elliot Road is one of the smaller landed estates that we’ve visited but it drew my attention for 3 reasons:
1. It is SUPER close to an MRT station(people usually gripe that landed houses are very inaccessible if you are reliant on public transport.) Once Siglap MRT is completed (estimated 2024), I imagine some residents will be able to get to it in 2-3 minutes! According to Landtransportguru, there will be 4 above-ground exits, the locations of which have yet to be announced. If you’re wondering, Siglap MRT will be an underground station, so it won’t be as noisy as, say, Tanah Merah MRT. In the meantime, residents can get to Bedok MRT in about 20 minutes (on foot.)
If you’re baffled by this picture, the context is that you need to enter Tay Lian Teck Road (or Palm Road) to get to Elliot Road. Given the small number of houses in the area, 2 road entrances is very generous!
Note: When I visited, I couldn’t really hear any construction noise, despite the MRT still being under construction, probably because I visited over the weekend.
2. It is a freehold landed estate with a zoning of 1.4 so, in the absence of other restrictions, houses could potentially be redeveloped into low-rise (5-story) condos (assuming the plot of land is big enough, of course.) Currently, there are already a couple of boutique condos in the area, such as Eastbay, Dong Xing Court, East Palm, Fortune Spring and Elliot At The East Coast (a larger development that TOP-ed in 2013.)
Let’s take a look at them below, so you know what the neighbours are like!
Here’s a photo of one.Sneak peek into the grounds, which look rather spacious for a small development. Unfortunately, in the style of old condos, it appears to be above-ground/uncovered parking (and no basement.)The yellow building on the left is Elliot Signature, another boutique condo, and there are private houses both to the left and right of it.Entrance to another small condo in the development. Again, compared to some of the other boutique developments I’ve seen (e.g. Jalan Loyang Besar), the ones here appear to have more spacious grounds.This is the bigger condo I mentioned, on the right (Elliot At the East.) Across the road (on the left of the photo) are houses.This is what the condo looks like. (There was a 3 bedroom, 2,300+ sq ft penthouse here for sale at the time of writing, FYI.)If you were wondering, this is what the houses across look like. I find them really interesting! They’re sort of semi-Ds meet detached houses. Note how the porch connects the 2 houses, yet they don’t share a wall, so the houses get light and air from all 4 sides. It’s really only possible if your land plot is quite large, if not there is a lot of “wasted space.”Two of the roads off Upper East Coast Road within this estate are cul-de-sacs (dead ends that don’t have vehicular access to the other roads in the estate.) This is one of them! The apartment above looks like it could do with a bit of TLC, unfortunately!On the note of larger land plots, observe how this unit has a front lawn large enough to be used as a basketball court!
Oh wow, we’ve already done quite a bit of a tour of the estate and I haven’t even gotten around to my 3rd reason for featuring this estate!
3. Namely, it’s within walking distance of East Coast Park! It’s currently about a 25 minute’s walk to East Coast Lagoon Food Village, but that’s because you currently can’t cut through Marine Parade Road and have to detour to Bedok South Ave 1. Once the MRT is done, the walking time may be reduced so, unlike the unlucky line of cars I saw queuing to enter the East Coast Park car park, you’ll have the sea and good food right at your footstep!
Here’s the Masterplan of the area, where you can see the assigned Plot Ratio, as well as the proximity to East Coast Park (it’s the green area at the bottom of the photo.) North of the Estate is Opera Estate, which was one of the first landed enclaves in the East that we visited.
Besides East Coast Park, you also have a Park Connector right outside!
With the landed houses of Tay Lian Teck Drive behind me, this is what I see.Taking a look to my left – I believe that’s Villa Marina to the right of the photo. Sean previously did a review of the condo and it looked pretty grand from the photos! And, before you ask, yes it’s 99-years leasehold.
If you walk all the way down, it brings you to Marine Parade Road (not very far away), where you can find Masjid Kampung Siglap and Victoria School. Next door Is Laguna Park condo, which also has a restaurant on-site (Diamond Kitchen.) Slightly further down, there’s Good Shepherd Convent Kindergarten.
So quite a lot of conveniences in the area!
Now looking down my right, the Park Connector/Siglap Linear Park takes me back to Upper East Coast Road and even all the way up to Opera Estate. (I have photos in my tour of the area FYI.) Although we don’t see any along this stretch, further up there is exercise equipment on the Linear Park. I must say that it’s one of the amenities in the area that makes this area feel like such a nice place to stay. (It’s quiet and quaint but not ulu.)As I walk down the Park Connector to get back to Upper East Coast Road, I pass this super small lane on my right that leads back to the Elliot Road houses. It looks much too narrow for comfort, so I decide to head back in via the main road!Whilst we wait for Siglap MRT to complete construction, there’s a bus stop (in the background of the photo, to the left.) You get Buses 10, 10e, 12, 13, 14, 14a, 14e, 16 and 16m FYI.To my left, behind the bus stop is a plot of open land that is part of what gives the area its character (not as built up as the rest of Singapore.) Alas, according to the Masterplan, it has been zoned residential, but thankfully with a ratio of 1.4/5 stories, so we shouldn’t get a mammoth skyscraper blocking out all the light here.Across from the bus stop is a row of shophouses. (This is sort of left of the Park Connector.) (Also note what I said about the character of the neighbourhood. The fact that you don’t see lots of tall apartment buildings here is one reason the East still feels so laid back and lovely in my opinion!)
The shophouses look nondescript but there are quite a few interesting shops, such as Tiong Bahru Bakery, Mikawa Yakitori Bar, Bloom Coffee and Black Pearl Steakhouse. If you keep walking down, you even find a Killiney Kopitiam, Starbucks, Fairprice, CS Fresh, DBS Treasures, and Blu Kouzina. So despite the lack of a mall nearby, the area is very well-served!
Now looking right of the Park Connector: again, no tall buildings to block the view and ruin the neighbourhood!Across the road is this row of old-school shophouses. Beautiful, aren’t they?To my right are more shophouse commercial units, including Al Capone Sports Bar and Etna Italian Restaurant.There’s a police station across from the Elliot Road estate (it’s sort of behind the silver car.) More shophouses! Walking back into the estate via Palm Road, which is entry only (single lane), you see Siglap South Community Centre. I imagine the estate is a great place for families with elderly members as they can enrol for dance, cooking and what-not classes at the CC, which is within walking distance!
Note: for those who drive, there’s a SPC petrol station across the road here. I didn’t take a photo as I figure you know what a petrol station looks like! Next to the petrol station is another bus stop, so you can see you’re literally surrounded by public transport here!
Before we head in (that’s Palm Road where you see the One-Way sign), here’s a look at the main road for you to better envisage what living here would be like. Although the roads are quite big, it was fairly quiet compared to the other parts of Singapore that I’ve visited (aka still rather peaceful at the time of writing.)One of the houses that we see along Palm Road. Very sizeable! (But don’t worry, there are terrace and semi-Ds here too.)Having said that, there are semi-Ds and then there are Semi-Ds. The ones above are clearly Semi-Ds (i.e. in a different league) given that you can park at least 3 cars on the front porch!)One thing to note is that Palm Road is quite narrow, and some cars like to stop along it to allow passengers on/off. However, the road isn’t wide enough for you to overtake, so you’ll have to wait till the car in front is done. I’m not sure if this Bulky Waste Alert is alluding to the narrow roads.The rest of the interior roads are broad, spacious and GREAT for visitors’ parking (on weekends)!I say weekends as there’s St Andrews Autism School within the estate, so I’m not sure what the traffic situation will be like when school is in session.That’s the school on the left and houses on the right.
There’s also Wisma Mendaki, a self-help group, in the estate. It has quite extensive grounds, some of which have been turned into a football pitch – this is near the entrance to the Park Connector. (See above.) (Siglap CC, St Andrew’s Autism School and Wisma Mendaki are all zoned accordingly FYI, so they shouldn’t be converted into residential projects in the near future.)That’s Wisma Mendaki on the right of the photo, along Kee Sun Avenue. In the distance is Marine Parade Road.As mentioned, there are also terrace houses here.Another row of terrace houses.Most of the houses were not rebuilt, although there were a few exceptions. The ones above, for example, look pretty modern. (Personally, I found the architecture of the older houses here quite unique.) Another modern unit. I’ve photographed it with its neighbour in view so you can see how much plot ratio maximisation there is to be had here!Something a few new owners were making the most of, by rebuilding!Sidetrack: I like how the pavements here are wide, tidy and well-landscaped.There’s also a good area in front of some gates such that, if the 2-3 car front porch isn’t sufficient, you can park an additional car if you don’t close the gate!See what I mean about nice and walkable pavements? Some are so narrow I have no clue why they’re even created, as they’re much too small to be functional!Some of the vintage-looking units are here.
I miss old-school architecture which wasn’t about maximising every inch of space, and rather functional living! Look at those enclosed balconies – they’re really good for Singapore living as they’re nice and shaded from the sun but still well-ventilated and breezy!
I’m guessing this is the MRT construction barrier? From the looks of the sign, pedestrians used to be able to get to Marine Parade Road here but are no longer able to.Zoomed out a bit so you can get a better perspective.
We’ve more or less walked around the entire estate now. In case you couldn’t tell, I really liked the area and very much enjoyed my walkabout!
Having said that, 2 things to note are:
Given that the plot ratio is 1.4, if many houses are redeveloped into boutique condos, the character of the estate would totally change and would become less charming. (There would also be many more units/people and thus the area would be less peaceful!)
Prices probably aren’t cheap, even for Singapore, given the proximity of the MRT and the fact that the plots here are quite big! (At the time of writing, there didn’t seem to be any units for sale, so either the house owners love living here or they’re waiting for the potential price boost once the MRT is completed!)
Let me know what you think of Elliot Avenue and its houses in the comments, or if there are any areas you’d like to see more of!
TJ
13 min read
Learning about quite a few lesser known areas through this series. please showcase more off these smaller estates
Glad you’ve found them! We’ll continue featuring more of such estates 🙂