SINGAPORE - The new Yishun Park Hawker Centre with 45 cooked food stalls and about 750 seats will open in September.

Pinball machines and arcade games will be made available for residents at the Games Square in the hawker centre.

The facility will also have natural ventilation and built-in tray-return facilities at accessible locations. It will also have family-friendly features, such as child-friendly toilet facilities and family-friendly seating.The hawker centre will be managed by Timbre Group on a not-for-profit basis. It is the latest in a series of socially-conscious hawker centres which are being developed by the National Environment Agency (NEA).

The NEA said in a statement on Wednesday (June 14) that in order to sustain the hawker trade and support new entrants, Timbre Group will be setting aside two 'incubator stalls' for potential hawkers. These hawkers will go through a one-year incubation period,after which Timbre will help to place them in its network of food and beverage outlets, or refer them to NEA to apply for a hawker stall in other centres.

To ensure affordable meals for the residents, each stall will have at least one basic meal priced at $3.00. Timbre will also introduce bulk purchasing of ingredients to help hawkers defray the cost of raw food materials.

Within six months of the centre's opening, a 3-in-1 mobile application will be implemented that allows patrons to make cashless payment with store credits, place meal orders electronically to the stallholders, and enjoy a 10 per cent discount for food and drinks. Patrons can top up credits on the app via kiosks, which will also allow patrons to order food.

Timbre has also proposed the implementation of a Radio Frequency Identification tray return system that is integrated with the centralised dishwashing area. This will streamline tray return processes so that cleaners can focus on the cleaning of tables and common areas. This would also reduce the cleaners' workload as they do not have to sort and return used crockery.

There will also be weekend activities at the hawker centre to promote community and family bonding. Sports matches will also be aired on selected days on large screens to promote community bonding.

The NEA added in its statement that the Timbre Group's proposal was chosen out of five contenders as it "showed a strong emphasis on social objectives, had various productivity measures, and comprised innovative solutions to ensure the vibrancy of the hawker centre".

The NEA has been looking to socially-conscious operators to help improve the operational efficiency of hawker centres. Three hawker centres - Ci Yuan Hawker Centre, Bukit Panjang Hawker Centre and Our Tampines Hub Hawker Centre - are currently operated by such managing agents.