Union Square Residences Location Highlights
Click Here for Enlarged Union Square Residences Location Highlights
Union Square Residences sits at 28 Havelock Road in District 1, on the stretch of the Singapore River where the CBD, Clarke Quay, Chinatown and Fort Canning meet. Three MRT stations across two lines are within walking distance, the nearest being Clarke Quay on the North East Line at roughly seven minutes on foot. What makes the address unusual is the overlap rather than any one part of it: the CBD, the river’s nightlife stretch, Chinatown’s heritage blocks and two hill parks are all within walking distance of the same front door. The development’s own particulars are on the project information page.
Union Square Residences Location Map
Click Here for Enlarged Union Square Residences Location Map
Connectivity and Transport
Three MRT stations are within walking distance of Union Square Residences: Clarke Quay (NE5) and Chinatown (NE4 and DT19) at roughly seven minutes on foot, and Fort Canning (DT20) at roughly fifteen. Between them they put the North East Line and the Downtown Line at the door, and Chinatown is the interchange between the two, so a resident can change lines without leaving walking distance of home.
Key journeys from each station:
MRT journeys from the three stations within walking distance of Union Square Residences<
[table id=10 /] Two of those counts are worth a word of explanation, because they look wrong against a map. Bugis is six stops from Fort Canning rather than the two the distance suggests, because the Downtown Line runs south into the CBD and loops back north before it gets there. And Chinatown reaches the CBD in fewer stops than Fort Canning does despite being further from it, for the same reason: Chinatown is already on the southbound leg.
By car, Orchard Road, Marina Bay Sands and the Esplanade are approximately ten minutes away. The site connects to the Ayer Rajah Expressway by way of the Central Expressway and the East Coast Parkway.
Parks, the River and Green Connections
Union Square Residences sits between two hill parks with the Singapore River running past the front door, which is a genuinely unusual combination for a District 1 address rather than a turn of phrase. Fort Canning Park is a short walk north and Pearl’s Hill City Park a short walk south, and the walk between them runs along the river through the middle of the site.
Fort Canning Park is the historic hill park above the Civic District, with walking trails and open lawns, reached on foot from the north side of the site.
Pearl’s Hill City Park is the quieter of the two, built around a reservoir on top of a hill behind Chinatown, and described in the developer’s own materials as a quiet retreat in the Chinatown area.
The Singapore River park connector runs directly through the precinct, linking Robertson Quay upstream and Boat Quay downstream, so the whole stretch is walkable and cyclable without touching a main road.
Dining, Nightlife and Everyday Amenities
The nearest amenities are inside the development itself. Union Square carries approximately 65 retail and F&B units in conserved shophouses on partially pedestrianised streets, alongside a 20-storey Grade A office tower and a co-living building, so the ground floor of the development is a working retail street rather than a lobby.
Immediately beyond it, Clarke Quay occupies five blocks of restored shophouses and warehouses given over to restaurants, wine bars and entertainment, and remains the anchor of the river’s nightlife. Boat Quay and Robertson Quay sit downstream and upstream of it along the same walk. Chinatown is the other direction, with its food streets, wet market and hawker centres, and the heritage shophouse blocks between the two.
Schools and Institutions
River Valley Primary School is within 1 km of Union Square Residences, which is the band that carries the highest priority in the Ministry of Education’s Primary 1 registration exercise. Priority registration is measured as a straight-line distance from the home address rather than as a drive time, so buyers should confirm the radius using MOE’s own school-finder tool before relying on it.
One point specific to a development still under construction: a parent registering a child for Primary 1 using the address of a property they have bought but not yet moved into must have a vacant possession or delivery date falling within two years of the child’s Primary 1 entry. Vacant possession here is expected on 15 March 2031, which sets the earliest intake this address can be used for.
Nearby tertiary and specialist institutions include Singapore Management University, LASALLE College of the Arts, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and the School of the Arts.
Precinct Planning and Growth Context
The site exists because of a planning decision, not a land tender. Union Square is the first large-scale mixed-use redevelopment project in the Singapore River Planning Area approved under URA’s Strategic Development Incentive Scheme, which allowed the former Central Mall and Central Square sites to be combined and redeveloped with 67% more gross floor area than conventional redevelopment would have permitted. That is a completed approval rather than a proposal, and it is the reason four separate uses fit on one 6,238 sqm site. The land is zoned Commercial and Residential under URA’s Master Plan 2019.
The wider CBD is being rebalanced toward living rather than only working. URA introduced the CBD Incentive Scheme in 2019 to encourage exactly this kind of conversion of older commercial stock into mixed-use development, on the reasoning that a downtown with residents in it stays open after office hours. Union Square is one result of that direction of travel.
The Greater Southern Waterfront is a long-range programme with no completion date. It covers roughly 2,000 hectares running from Pasir Panjang to Marina East, and it appears in URA’s long-term planning rather than as a scheduled build. It is worth knowing about as context for the southern edge of the city, but it is not a dated commitment and should not be read as one.
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