Ubi cafe built on illegal mezzanine ordered to close after just 1 month

A newly-opened cafe has been ordered by the authorities to close its doors — just a little over a month after it opened. 

The reason? The owner had illegally built a mezzanine inside the food court at Oxley Bizhub located at Ubi — which they also own — to house Cafe Limonci, which serves coffee, pastries and gelato. 

According to Lianhe Zaobao, the establishment is currently under investigation by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA), the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and the Singapore Food Agency (SFA). 

The BCA also issued a Closure and Demolition Order to the owners on April 10, reported the Chinese daily. 

The name of the food court was not mentioned in that report. 

When a reporter from the Chinese daily visited the cafe on Wednesday (April 19), the staircase that led to the cafe had already been sealed off. 

The Chinese daily also spoke to another tenant in the same building, who said that the mezzanine had actually been built years ago, but was left vacant. 

Cafe Limonci took to Instagram to announce their untimely closure last Wednesday (April 12), saying "overzealous naysayers" had reported them to the authorities. 

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In their post, the cafe operators acknowledged that they were "made aware of regulation challenges" of setting up the cafe, but wanted to "sort them out in a systematic process". 

"Weekly complaints from various parties have led to many time-consuming meetings between different government agencies and contractors who refuse to give a clear solution other than the easy answer to close up shop.

"Every other day, our staff would be bombarded with questions about the business and have their pictures taken," they wrote in the post. 

Despite the logistical challenges, the establishment reassured its patrons that this isn't the end, promising that they would "open [their] doors" once these "external challenges" are resolved.

"Don’t worry, this isn’t goodbye. We will see you again soon. Maybe at a Cafe Limonci 2.0?"

For now, Cafe Limonci will be running a pop-up store inside Yamato Izakaya, a Japanese restaurant located in the same building — where they will be serving drinks and bites. 

AsiaOne has reached out to Cafe Limonci and the food court operator for comment.

Property agency fined for building hidden floor 

Just last month, a co-owner of a property agency was slapped with a fine of $50,000 for the use of an illegal mezzanine floor within an eighth-floor unit at The Alexcier building in Alexandra Road, owned by him and his wife.

The extra 5,381 sq ft of space was used as a working office and storage area. 

When Yeo Choon Guan realised that the space had been built without the authorities' approval, he erected a display shelf door to hide the staircase to the mezzanine floor.

He was eventually convicted of permitting the erection of the illegal floor without the Commissioner of Civil Defence’s approval of the plan for fire safety works.

claudiatan@asiaone.com