LHN Limited: Creating productive spaces

With careful planning, creativity, foresight and top-notch space optimisation skills, the company overhauls old buildings and allows them to exceed their former glory.

When LHN Holdings first secured a lease for 10 Raeburn Park, the property was little more than a nondescript old school building which had been vacant for years. Soon enough, this once-unattractive piece of real estate was transformed into the company’s swanky headquarters. “Our expertise lies in our ability to transform old, unused and underutilised properties into productive spaces,” says Kelvin Lim, Executive Chairman and Group Managing Director of LHN Limited. “When we secured the master lease for this building, the net lettable area was only 115,000 square feet. Overall, we increased the net lettable space to 130,000 square feet.”

The SGX-listed real estate management service and logistics service provider is involved primarily in space optimisation. LHN Holdings offers and sublets commercial, industrial and residential properties to its tenants after it has optimised the spaces on its properties. As for Raeburn Park, the group converted the old school canteen and school hall into office spaces and made the corridors narrower in order to expand and convert the classrooms into commercial space. “We secure master leases to such buildings and then apply our space optimisation expertise so in order to increase the lettable area of these buildings, which we then lease out to our tenants, who are willing to pay more for thoughtfully designed and highly usable space,” Lim says.

Thoughtfully-crafted spaces

Apart from transforming buildings, LHN Holdings also pours much thought into attracting the right tenants and providing them with important perks. “Our strategy is to offer spaces that are relevant to businesses no matter what stage in the business life cycle they are in,” notes Lim. “Some of our tenants have been with us since they were start-ups and only needed a few workstations. As their businesses expanded, we were able to cater to their growing space needs from our extensive portfolio of properties.”

Three of the company’s innovative space concepts—PinkJunction, Work+Store and GreenHub—were honoured at this year’s Listed Companies Awards. “We have concepts that cater to companies of all sizes, even those that may only require a workstation or virtual office,” says Lim.

PickJunction, Work+Store and GreenHub

PickJunction, which was launched in 2016, is an omni-channel platform that brings people closer to their local community of artisans, boutiques and studios. It brings together a tight selection of independent brands offering a range of goods and services from furniture to lifestyle and fashion. Targeted at small business owners, it specifically addresses their concerns about marketing, manpower and display space rental costs.

On the other hand, the Work + Store concept caters to business owners seeking dual-purpose work space arrangements as well as households or individuals in need of temporary storage solutions. It was launched in 2015 and meets the work and storage requirements of business owners by allowing them to perform order fulfilment duties and store their goods conveniently and securely within the same facility.

GreenHub, launched in 2012, is a premium office brand which offers a complete suite of business solutions in a green and conducive ready-to-work environment with flexible lease terms. It offers tenants a one-stop, one-fee business package.

Lim believes that his company’s success can be pinned down to their ability to respond to rapidly shifting market conditions. “We pride ourselves in our ability to quickly identify and respond to evolving market needs and trends,” the managing director notes. “We monitor market trends very closely so that we can come up with concepts, new features and services that are relevant to today’s business needs and trends. We have concepts that cater to companies of all sizes, even those that may only require a workstation or virtual office.”

Staying ahead of the curve

The company stands out not only because of its ability to beautify and transform but because of its capability also to add value to old and underutilised properties. “It is a good feeling to see such buildings regain their former glory and to breathe life into them rather than to leave them vacant and dilapidated,” he says.

LHN Holdings operates two GreenHub-branded properties in Jakarta, Indonesia, and one in Yangon, Myanmar. It also has two other businesses: its Facilities Management supports its Space Optimisation business and has a presence in Hong Kong; while its Logistics Services has a fleet of vehicles catering to container trucking, oil, oil-related and petro-chemical products and one container depot each in Singapore and Thailand.