Such concepts have rapidly taken root in Singapore owing to the city’s high density, she adds. “I think overall, people just are not as focused on ownership anymore. People are really focused on: ‘What is the experience that I’m getting?’ and they value freedom and flexibility over ownership. That’s something that we’ve leaned into.”
Everything is about experiences, says Mi. “That’s why companies like Airbnb have gone out of homes into Airbnb Experiences; it’s the idea that you’re willing to pay for something and you don’t own it, but you value it because it enriches your life for a certain period of time. That’s the emotion that you want to tap into.”
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Renderings of The Great Room Keppel South Central, opening in June
Four years after being acquired by CBRE-backed US flexible workplace provider Industrious, The Great Room is powering through 2026 with three back-to-back openings in Singapore, starting with the debut of The Great Room Keppel South Central in June.
The Great Room’s 10th location here will be located on the 10th floor of the 33-storey commercial tower at Hoe Chiang Road in Tanjong Pagar. Based on marketing and pre-leasing talks, Mi says there has been “some good interest” from potential tenants for the 20,714 sq ft Keppel South Central location. “A few of the people who have signed up at Keppel South Central are existing members, which is nice; we have some new sales as well.”
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The Great Room Keppel South Central will be the brand’s first space to achieve the Green Mark Healthier Workplace certification, a joint effort between the Building and Construction Authority and the Health Promotion Board. Under this scheme, companies will have to consider factors such as space selection and office design, operation and maintenance, as well as occupant engagement and empowerment.
While The Great Room Keppel South Central is the latest property to be signed, it is opening ahead of The Great Room’s two other upcoming locations — a 36,570 sq ft space at Shaw Tower and a 29,620 sq ft space at Stamford Place — which were announced in 2025.
“Our locations are a bit like a family, where the siblings all have different personalities and they look quite different but they all have the same DNA,” Mi tells City & Country. “Each of these locations was selected quite deliberately because they’re also in very different positions and they target different demographics.”
Keppel South Central is located in the “cool Tanjong Pagar area” near the CBD, Mi adds. “It’s got a beautiful view of the water. We also have a really nice partner with Keppel in that location.”
Meanwhile, Shaw Tower is a “beautiful Grade-A building [with an] amazing location and address”, says Mi. “It is very sustainability-forward and technologically advanced, so we can see a lot of financial or professional services firms being attracted to that area.”
Stamford Place is “super different” from the other two, Mi reflects. “It’s in this interesting juncture between heritage, commerce and culture — just kind of the precinct that it’s in, and the building will have a serviced apartment and a lot of F&B, so targeting a bit more lifestyle, creative types.”
Located in the former Stamford Court at 61 Stamford Road, The Great Room Stamford Place is also “special”, says Mi, “because it’s with a repeat landlord partner”. “Having a really trusted relationship and a repeat relationship for us is meaningful.”
The Great Room South Bridge opened in April 2023 as the brand’s first heritage shophouse location
Elevate Capital, The Great Room’s upcoming landlord at Stamford Place, was founded in 2024 by veteran Singaporean real estate entrepreneur Ashish Manchharam. Under 8M Real Estate, an investment property firm Manchharam founded in 2014, he was previously The Great Room’s landlord for its 22,000 sq ft South Bridge space — the co-working brand’s first heritage shophouse location.
Hong Kong-based real estate investment firm Crane Capital bought out Manchharam in 2023 and assumed full control of 8M, eyeing its valuable portfolio of conservation shophouses in downtown Singapore. The Great Room South Bridge is still operating today.
Supply crunch
For some quarters now, real estate consultancies have warned of an upcoming supply crunch in Grade-A office space in Singapore’s CBD.
Supply for Singapore’s most highly-sought-after office space has come to a standstill after the 1.26 million sq ft IOI Central Boulevard Towers hit the market in mid-2024. Shaw Towers stands as the only major office completion scheduled for 2026. Newport Tower, slated for 2027, is the only other CBD Grade-A completion on the horizon. In between, the 15-storey Solitaire On Cecil is expected to come online with 216,484 sq ft of freehold strata office space. All units there were sold by end-July 2024, just 16 months after it was first launched for sale in March 2023.
Limited supply “definitely supports premium operators” like The Great Room, says Mi. “I think now people really want to lock in the right experience but they also want flexibility to grow or to scale down. We provide that. All of our locations are now well over 90%; we’re very highly occupied in Singapore. Also, with the current global and political uncertainty, people value that flexibility a lot more.”
That occupancy figure is based on the number of desks available in each location and does not include the generous common areas often photographed in The Great
Room’s premium, “hospitality-led” workspaces.
The Great Room’s three upcoming locations will help “tide us through this supply crunch”, says Mi. “We will always continue to grow in Singapore, that’s where our regional team here is based, but it will allow us to also experiment a little bit more with the different product types [and] work with different occupiers and expand regionally in the next year before we continue growing in Singapore.”
The experiential layer
The Great Room opened its first location in 2016 at One George Street, with a later extension completed in September 2017
In a media interview last year, Mi said co-working spaces “started like motels”. Then, The Great Room One George Street opened in 2016 and elevated the co-working concept “to a level akin to a hotel”. “Now, it’s like resorts — we’re designing entire buildings, ecosystems and experiences with care and intention,” she said then.
Mi expands on the resort analogy: “It’s the idea that the experiential layer can really transform so many different types of businesses, and it can impact landlords, global occupiers [and] people within your space. So, it’s not just about the two floors that we’re building; how do you activate an entire building or precinct for a landlord? How do you talk to a global occupier and say you have 50 offices around the world; how do we be your partner in delivering and managing those offices for you and putting in your experience that you want for your employees?”
In an age where employees “can choose where they want to work” and “don’t have to come into an office”, companies are trying various means to entice their staff to return to the workplace, says Mi. “Why would you come into an office? It’s because you’re either feeling delighted and you’re having fun, or you’re empowered and recognised, or you feel like you’re making the right connections — that’s what’s going to get you out of your house and into the office.”
The Great Room has spent a decade solving this problem that companies face, she adds. “It’s very simple in theory but it’s not that easy to actually implement — that’s what we do best. A lot of these larger occupiers are also trying, [but] unless they have a huge workplace transformation department — which a lot of them don’t — they’re actually just thinking: ‘How can we make it more interesting for our employees to come back?’”
Mi is not only looking at signing new members; The Great Room’s newest managed solutions proposition will see the brand designing offices for large clients on their own floorplate. “A managed solution is when you work with a client and you design, build and operate a customised office solution for them in a building of their choice. A lot of these clients that have been with us from day one have grown from one- to 100-person companies; as they grow out of our spaces, we’re able to grow with them into spaces of their choice.”
The Great Room’s managed solutions launches in Asia this year. “We were never able to do that by ourselves,” says Mi. “But now with CBRE and this institutional relationship — they operate 7 billion sq ft globally of property on behalf of landlords and occupiers — being able to tap into that and add in the layer of what we do best — the experience component will transform what going to work means for a lot of companies.”
Co-working competition
Entering CBRE’s fold via Industrious has granted The Great Room a strong backer in real estate, and members here also benefit from the association. “Any [The Great Room] member in Singapore can go to any Industrious [co-working space] around the world. So, if you’re a member of Singapore, you can show up in New York, you can show up in London, you can show up in Amsterdam, and you could go work for the day,” says Mi, who is also managing director of Industrious Asia-Pacific (Apac).
The Great Room Park Silom, opened in September 2023
The Great Room Gaysorn Tower, opened in June 2018 as the brand’s first location outside of Singapore
Outside of Singapore, The Great Room first expanded into Bangkok with a location in Gaysorn Tower in June 2018. It then ventured into Hong Kong with One Taikoo Place in Quarry Bay in April 2019. Following Industrious’ acquisition in May 2022, The Great Room opened the first of two floors at Park Silom in Bangkok in August 2023 and entered Sydney with Castlereagh Street in February 2024 and One O’Connell Street in July 2025.
The Great Room is facing off against a roster of co-working competitors here. The GIC- and Frasers Property-backed JustCo, for example, is making waves this month with its IPO on the Singapore Exchange. JustCo operates three brands, ranging from the no-frills The Boring Office to luxury concept The Collective.
Still, Mi thinks The Great Room has “a lot of space to grow”. “My preference would be to grow in newer markets and do something that we already know how to do really well and carry that forward, rather than trying to experiment into lots of other product types in Singapore.”
Excluding the upcoming managed solutions line, The Great Room offers four membership plans: a dedicated office for two to 50 pax teams, a hot-desk for individual members, a day pass for visiting workers and a virtual office, which includes mail-handling service.
About four in five members of The Great Room are in dedicated offices, says Mi. Interestingly, “hot-deskers” and those on virtual office plans are “more visible sometimes” because they engage with the community, she adds. “They’re the ones that are usually very social.”
Prices vary across locations, workspace configuration and included services, averaging from $1,500 per desk for those using dedicated offices. Hot-desking members, who are free to roam across locations, pay from $750 per month before additional services.
“Ever since we started, it has always been a highly competitive landscape,” says Mi. “There have always been competitors, but for us, we’ve always believed that we don’t have to be everything to everyone, but we just have to be very good at what we choose to do. The focus has always been on a premium hospitality-inspired co-working offering, and that focus has served us well.”
Photos: Albert Chua/The Edge Singapore,The Great Room, Siren Design Studio
