Posted on
April 03, 2013 09:46:37 PM [ BusinessWorld Online ]
PROPERTY
developer Megaworld Corp. is set to partially open by 2016 its P65-billion
Uptown Bonifacio mixed-use project in Taguig City’s Fort Bonifacio area,
company officials said yesterday.
“We would like to announce that [the
construction of] our Uptown Bonifacio project, which is a 15-hectare township,
is right now in full swing,” Noli D. Hernandez, Megaworld senior vice-president
for sales and marketing, told reporters in a briefing in Taguig City yesterday.
Uptown
Bonifacio is Megaworld’s high-end, cosmopolitan-themed township project
accessible via Kalayaan Avenue in the northern part of Fort Bonifacio.
The township
project will feature two luxury condominiums, a shopping mall, and corporate
office towers, a Megaworld statement showed yesterday.
The One
Uptown Residence and Uptown Ritz condominium towers are set to be completed in
July 2016 and June 2017, respectively, the statement read.
Both towers
are expected to rake in a combined P10 billion in sales, Mr. Hernandez said.
Uptown Ritz,
a 45-storey “all-suite” building, will feature ground floor boutiques, three-
and four-bedroom units on the penthouse floors, and two amenity decks,
One Uptown
Residence will feature one- to three-bedroom units, two amenity floors, and
access to the next-door Uptown Place Mall shopping center.
Uptown Place
Mall, meanwhile, will be a five-storey, six-basement structure with a
47,962-square-meter total floor area and 36,689 square meters of total leasable
area.
The mall,
which will open in 2016, will feature five state-of-the-art cinemas, a 2,056-square-meter
roof garden, a ground floor garden plaza, and various water features.
“We will be
announcing the (mall) tenants very soon, probably this year, when we’ve
finalized the floor spaces and allocations,” according to Harold C. Geronimo,
Megaworld strategic marketing & communications director, said during the
same briefing.
Uptown
Bonifacio’s office component, on the other hand, will feature five office
buildings measuring 15 storeys each, as well as the planned 25-storey Alliance
Global Tower.
The said
tower will be the future headquarters of conglomerate Alliance Global Group,
Inc., Megaworld’s parent firm, which is currently based in Makati City.
“2016 is our
target for the three towers, and 2017 for the two other towers,” Mr. Hernandez
said when asked for the completion date of the five office buildings.
At present,
Megaworld already has two other township projects in Fort Bonifacio, a former
military camp, namely: the Forbes Town Center, which measures five hectares;
and McKinley Hill, which measures 50 hectares.
Megaworld’s
other project, McKinley West, is currently being built. It measures 34.5
hectares.
Mr. Hernandez
said Uptown Bonifacio’s strategic location fueled the company’s expansion in
the area.
“If you look
at the map, this area (Uptown Bonifacio) is in the northern area, the top of
BGC (Bonifacio Global City). It’s like a crown jewel of BGC.
We want to
take advantage of that,” Mr. Hernandez explained in a separate interview.
Megaworld was
incorporated in 1989 as Megaworld Properties and Holdings, Inc., and is
currently engaged in the development of large-scale, mixed-use master planned
townships.
The developer
saw its nine-month net income drop by 14.93% to P5.70 billion as of September
2012 from P6.70 billion in the same period in 2011, mainly due to higher
reported expenses.
Revenues rose
by 3.88% to P23.85 billion versus P22.96 billion, thanks to higher residential
sales, while costs and expenses climbed by 11.75% to P18.16 billion from P16.25
billion.
Shares of
Megaworld closed at P3.80 apiece yesterday, unchanged from their previous close
last Tuesday. -- Franz Jonathan G. de la Fuente
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