Speech by Minister Lawrence Wong at the Opening of Admiralty Park
Oct 28, 2017
I am very happy to join all of you this morning to launch our enhanced and revamped Admiralty Park.
All of you would know that we have come a long way in building our Garden City. We started with very intensive tree-planting. Every year we would have a tree-planting day, and our founding Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew showed the way through his lifetime, planting a tree every year. We set aside spaces for greenery in our housing estates and along our roads, and we built parks in our neighbourhoods, parks like this.
Today, we have an extensive network of green spaces, and very well preserved nature areas too. In fact, it is very fitting that just not too long ago, NParks received a UNESCO award for environmental protection. It is an international award to recognise outstanding contributions to protecting the environment, and one is given to the whole world, and our NParks team won this. It is a recognition of the hard work that all our NParks officers put to making Singapore green.
We have worked very hard to make Singapore a City in a Garden but we will make it even better. Today, we have about 300 km of park connectors, we will increase this to 400 km by 2030. Today, 80% of our residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park, we will increase the percentage to 90%.
In tandem with all these changes, we will continue to rejuvenate and enhance our parks, and Admiralty Park is just one example. This is the largest park in the North. It is already very popular with the residents in the area, and it is also an urban park with the largest and biggest nature area spanning 20 hectares in size.
NParks had sought ideas from the community and members of public on how to improve Admiralty Park. A lot of the feedback was to have more recreational spaces and opportunities for family bonding. But there was also a desire to maintain the tranquility, the nature and the greenery in the park. All of these suggestions have been carefully incorporated into the feedback and into the implementation of this revamped Admiralty Park.
To start with, NParks has used the hilly terrain around here to create a range of experiences for all park users. In fact, Admiralty Park will now contain the largest number of slides in a park – there are 26 slides in Admiralty Park alone. It includes a 32-metre long roller slide with interactive lighting and Singapore’s widest outdoor slide. There are slides for all ages, so all of you can try them out later, not just the kids. For those who want a bit more challenge, there are climbing nets and bridges installed across the play area. We have also designed the Junior Play area to be inclusive – there are wheelchair-accessible play equipment interspersed with other equipment. With a variety of play areas catering to a range of age groups and abilities, we hope that all of you can enjoy the park.
We are continuing to preserve the nature area too. Earlier I mentioned that Admiralty Park has the largest nature area amongst all the parks in Singapore. We are preserving this. It is a diverse mix of secondary forest, mangrove, riverine, and open grassland habitats, and home to more than 100 species of plants and animals. NParks has retained all of these ecosystems and enhanced them by planting more native trees. It has also installed a new viewing platform and a mangrove boardwalk to help visitors get closer to nature. That part of the park will only be opened in December, you have to wait for a bit more, but it will be a well done, well preserved nature area.
We hope that all of these new features have enhanced Admiralty Park. We are doing this here, but we are also starting work across other parks in Singapore. We are doing works in Jurong and East Coast Park, and we will progressively cover all our parks in Singapore.
But the vibrancy of our parks depends not just on hardware enhancements. It also depends on our people, on all of us park users, and how our communities create shared memories in these spaces. So today, in conjunction with the opening of Admiralty Park, NParks has also arranged for a variety of fun activities. They will kick off the second edition of the Parks Festival, which will see exciting programmes in our parks island-wide.
So do visit our parks, you are here today in Admiralty, you can visit other parks in Singapore, enjoy the weekend ahead with your family and friends. Thank you very much!