The Lighthouses and the Pilot Centres

Two Lighthouses open side by side in Year 1, Year 0 confirming the dates of works with NEA and the Town Council and timing Chinatown's start after its delayed repairs and redecoration (its last R&R ended in May 2019; Geylang Serai was refurbished in 2024): Chinatown Complex and Geylang Serai Market and Food Centre, for balance and inclusion: one deep in Chinese cooking, the other in Malay, with halal stalls from the start. Tekka Centre is the third pilot centre and opens in Year 2. Each is subject to its own hawkers' vote; if one declines, the plan seeks another centre with a similar cuisine strength. At each Lighthouse run the rent-band and ballot pilot with the fee subsidy, the first Buying Circles, the first Master Fellowships (eight at Chinatown Complex and two at Geylang Serai in Year 1), each with two apprentices learning at the master's own stall, the first relief cooks proving each recorded dish on the masters' days off, the blind Taste Council at a partner kitchen, the renewing Security Package and the evaluator. Any of the 123 government hawker centres can host a pilot centre, none favoured for who runs it; privately owned coffeeshops and food courts join only on the board's recommendation and without the Hawker Council's veto. Centres are ranked by their expected count of heritage-worthy stalls, the Year 0 proxy and then the Regulars' List's own count, subject to four conditions: a government centre; every community's cooking between them, with Geylang Serai in by default; no major works in a centre's first year; and consent, from the centre's association, its hawkers' vote and NEA or the Town Council. Chinatown Complex comes first by count (27 on the planning count); Tekka (9) has fewer than Old Airport Road (16) or Maxwell (13), and the community condition, not the count, puts it third. Old Airport Road and Maxwell are examples of a fourth and a fifth centre, add-ons costed at their own size. Each centre is costed from its own shape: its heritage-worthy stalls for the Fellowships, apprentices and dishes, its stall count for the cover, the relief cooks and the fee subsidy (§7.1). Tekka passes its own co-design veto, gets its trust deposits in the six months before it opens, and runs the same full loop one year behind the Lighthouses; the Taste Council, the repository and the core institution stay national. The loop to prove is master, documentation, apprentice, landing, sustained operation and a signed succession instrument. If it closes at all three, scaling is replication with evidence; if it closes at one and not the others, the evaluator publishes which joint failed, and where.

Who pays

SELF-FINANCING

The ask of Government

Decision

Host the pilot centres – NEA agrees to each pilot centre, and so does the Town Council where it manages the centre, once the centre's own hawkers have voted it forward (§6.2)

Instrument

NEA and Town Council administrative; the operator's agreement too wherever an operator runs the centre

Fiscal cost

Zero

What it buys

A place to test the whole loop in public, at the centres where the heritage-worthy stalls are most likely to be found (§6.3). "You can eat the programme."

From §7.7.

Who gains

Diners

Each centre is a place: you can eat the programme (§6.3).

Government

If the loop does not close, Singapore has spent a design-to-cost pilot's budget learning which joint failed, in public (§6.3).