Five furniture shops now occupying the seven blocks slated for this new cluster along Dempsey Road will move out by the end of this month.

In their place come September: A $2 million lifestyle complex called 6ix and 7even @ Dempsey, comprising restaurants, bars and retailers taking up 11 units.

The master tenant for this part of Tanglin Village is Forward Alliance, a logistics and warehousing company making its first foray into the food and beverage (F&B) industry. It is now sourcing for tenants to rival the two other nearby clusters of restaurants and bars in Dempsey Hill and Dempsey Hill Green.

Forward Alliance has a few tricks up its sleeve. It plans to bring in restaurants that will serve food that is new in the neighbourhood such as fusion cuisine; 'live' music joints are also on the cards.

It is planning to have a bicycle boutique housed in a 300 sq m space as well - a one-stop store for bicycle enthusiasts with a cafe, bicycle racks and services like showers and limousine transport home for tired cyclists and their wheels.

Another novel idea: A caravan park-turned-restaurant. Forward Alliance plans to import about five caravans of between 30 sq m and 50 sq m in size, and then kit them out as private dining rooms for up to 12 people.

The debut of 6ix and 7even @ Dempsey will mark the latest chapter in the area's transformation from sleepy furniture town to hip dining and drinking destination.

Nearly half of the 72 businesses there now are restaurants or bars, each paying rents of between $8 and $15 per sq ft.

Tanglin Village started out in the 1860s as army barracks. In the 1990s, it became known for its furniture shops. Then in 2004, the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) stepped up its search for tenants who would put the pre-war blocks to other uses.

Read the full story in Saturday's edition of The Straits Times