Riding the waves and hitting the ski slopes at Orchard Road

THEIR concept was a unique one to begin with: To build the world’s first snow, surf and skate attraction in tropical Singapore, on a prime plot of land the size of four Olympic swimming pools.

Daphne Goh, Alex Hsu and Terry Tan – three millennial entrepreneurs with little to no experience in design or construction – had to navigate a steep learning curve as they raced against time to get their facility called Trifecta up and running.

It was just 18 months ago in April 2022 when the trio – the co-founders of local adventure travel company The Ride Side – found out they were successful in their bid to build a new attraction concept on a vacant site between Somerset and Exeter Roads, off Orchard Road.

Securing the tender, which was awarded by the Singapore Land Authority, gave them a lease term of only six years. 

And that, said the 32-year-old Goh, was the chief reason why there was a need to fast-track everything – from agreeing on the designs and fabricating the equipment overseas to getting the necessary government approvals.

“We really had to maximise (the lease). We started construction only in February this year, so things were definitely escalated,” she told The Business Times in an interview after a tour of the premises, ahead of Trifecta’s grand opening this Saturday (Oct 28).

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The 49,611 square-foot space was built by Sanwah Construction, supported by PTC Construction, and designed by Singapore-based architects Studioshen.

“The biggest hurdle we had to overcome was this had never been done before anywhere in the world, to build a facility with all three sports – snowboarding, surfing and skateboarding. And to do so under such a tight construction timeline,” said Goh, a certified snowboarding instructor herself.

Trifecta – which was first announced at the Singapore Tourism Board’s (STB) tourism industry conference last year – is a signature attraction that is part of an ongoing larger plan to rejuvenate Orchard Road, Singapore’s main shopping, dining and entertainment hub.

The name Trifecta itself refers to a hallowed concept in adventure sports where a person manages to snowboard, surf and skateboard all on the same day.

“When someone says they completed the trifecta, that’s what they mean. It’s a feat for a few reasons, the obvious one being it’s quite difficult to be in a place where you can experience winter and summer conditions in the space of 24 hours,” said Goh.

“We thought about how to bring this concept to Singapore, a tropical country with no waves and no mountains. So now, people can hop from arena to arena here and get to do all three sports.”

At Trifecta, there are machines in the snow arena that replicate what actual mountain skiing is like.

Over at the surf arena is the largest standing wave pool in Asia – built by a German company called Citywave – that can generate “endless” waves of as high as 1.5 metres.

The skate arena has the world’s first hybrid skate bowl that is designed for skateboarding and surfskating. Open sessions at the skate bowl are free for the public.

About 70 people have been hired so far, including instructors for the various sports. In August, Trifecta sent a group of 20 instructors to New Zealand where they spent a week to get certified in skiing and snowboarding.

“Most of our team are also surfers, snowboarders, skiers and skateboarders. And now, they get to turn this into a career,” said Goh, who is the lead of marketing and business development.

She remains tight-lipped when BT asked about Trifecta’s investment cost, which is presumably a hefty sum given the scale and complexity of the project.

“We had to do a round of fundraising for this, and they are all private investors,” she said, adding that many are from the adventure sports community who understood what Trifecta’s vision was all about.

“It helps that they are surfers and snowboarders themselves. They understand intrinsically what we’re trying to do. We were lucky to find them at a time when it was difficult for the markets, and they came on board because they believed in a much bigger picture than us.”

On its part, STB provided Trifecta with some funding support from its four-year Tourism Development Fund. Last April, the government announced that a sum of nearly S$500 million has been earmarked to support the tourism sector’s recovery from the pandemic.