Orchard Towers: Sleaze goes out, church moves in

Cornerstone Community Church is moving into the building, and so are new restaurants and businesses

- Tan Hsueh Yun Senior Correspondent

If the walls of Orchard Towers could talk, they would tell tales of mayhem, madams and murder.

Not for nothing was the development, at the corner of Orchard and Claymore roads, known for its risque clubs and massage parlours.

Today though, the two 18-storey blocks, with retail and office space and 58 apartments, look forlorn, with many empty shop spaces on those once-buzzing four floors.

Some restaurants closed in a hurry, leaving behind empty wine bottles and upturned furniture.

The exodus began in 2023, when the girlie bars and risque clubs closed, after the Government announced in 2022 that it would stop renewing and granting public entertainment licences beyond May 2023.

But there are many signs of new life. Restaurants and businesses are setting up shop there, drawn by reasonable rents, say owners.

A 24-hour foodcourt, 400 Brew Kopi, opened in August at the basement of the front block. There is a Kopitiam on the ground floor.

At the rear block, enrichment centre Math Vision is taking up space on the eighth floor.

The biggest change, however, is expected to come when Cornerstone Community Church opens there. It bought up 19,000 sq ft of the fourth floor in the front block, and is expected to start services in December, drawing hundreds of churchgoers to the development.

INFAMOUS PAST That is quite a change for Orchard Towers. Sex workers used to prowl the perimeter of the buildings for customers, undeterred by, and returning in full force after, police raids.

The place was even voted the most notorious pickup joint in South-east Asia by the World Sex Guide website in 2002.

Fights broke out routinely, sometimes with fatal consequences. In 2019, a 33-year-old man died after being stabbed during a fight in the building. The killer, Tan Sen Yang, was sentenced to life imprisonment and 12 strokes of the cane in April 2024.