Posted on August 18, 2015 10:50:00 PM
[ BusinessWorld Online ]
MEGAWORLD Corp. is opening two new
malls within its township in Taguig City before the end of the year, kicking
off its planned rollout of 20 new malls in the next five years.
Speaking to reporters yesterday,
Megaworld First Vice-President Kevin L. Tan said the property conglomerate is
spending P4 billion to develop its full-scale flagship mall and a dining mall
with a combined gross floor area (GFA) of around 110,000 square meters (sq.m.)
in Uptown Bonifacio.
“We do have plans to open 20 more and
this is the first of that,” the son of billionaire Andrew L. Tan said.
By 2020, Megaworld’s lifestyle malls
will have a total GFA of 1.4 million sq.m. with their contribution to rental
income seen increasing to as much as 50% from the current 40%, Mr. Tan said.
“This is the time to expand it
aggressively because the economy is doing very well and consumption level is
quite high now,” he said.
“We’re riding along that trend by
building more of this.”
With the opening of the two malls in
Uptown Bonifacio, the total GFA of the real estate firm’s lifestyle malls will
increase to 414,000 sq.m.
“We’ve been quite aggressive here with
the launching of residential projects because demand for the units is quite
high. Same goes with the takeup of our BPO office buildings. The reason why we
have decided to put our flagship mall in this township was partly due to
demand. We’re ahead of schedule in many ways,” Mr. Tan said.
In 2012, Megaworld announced it would
invest P65 billion to build Uptown Bonifacio within a period of 10-20 years. It
will be home to luxury residential condominiums, office towers, open parks and
leisure amenities.
Uptown Place is a five-level upscale
mall covering 85,000 sq.m of retail and commercial spaces for international
luxury brands -- including foreign labels that are coming to the country for
the first time -- dining options as well as leisure and entertainment
amenities.
Anchor tenants include Rustan’s
Supermarket, Robinsons Appliances, Toys ‘R Us, True Value, National Bookstore
and Hamley’s, among others.
Beside Uptown Place is a dining mall
called Uptown Parade, a 25,000 sq.m. strip featuring a mix of specialty
restaurants serving international cuisines.
Its anchor tenant is The Palace
Superclub, the biggest night club in Asia with over 8,000 sq.m. of party space
that can accommodate around 10,000 people.
“This is very different... from
residential. We wanted to become a complete developer. When I started, I said
we’ll try and transform Megaworld [from] a residential developer to more of a
lifestyle developer, with a 360-degree approach to community living so
lifestyle malls had to be created to fulfill the vision to create these
townships,” Mr. Tan said.
Megaworld shares lost 21 centavos or
4.68% to P4.28 apiece.
Its profit slumped to P3.08 billion in
the April to June period, shrinking from P13.75 billion in the same three
months last year, the company’s consolidated statements of income showed.
Bottomline in the six months ending in
June, was P5.43 billion, from last year’s P16.44 billion. -- Krista Angela M.
Montealegre
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