By Leslie D. Venzon
MANILA, July 21 (PNA) — Property developer Megaworld Corp. is spending Php20 billion to complete 12 new office buildings in Fort Bonifacio over the next three years that will more than double its office space inventory in the area and create over 100,000 jobs.
“By 2018, our total office space inventory in Fort Bonifacio alone will reach around 650,000 square meters, still making us the leading office developer in this booming district,” said Jericho P. Go, senior vice president, Megaworld.
Go said of the 12 office towers in the pipeline, four with cumulative total of 150,000 square meters of space are currently being built in Uptown Bonifacio, the company’s 15.4-hectare integrated urban township.
“At present, several multinational companies have already signed up to set up their operations here. Uptown Towers 1, 2 and 3 are now 90 percent leased out even before we have completed the delivery of the said towers,” he said, adding they are set to deliver these projects this year and early 2016.
Go said bulk or around 70 to 80 percent of the company’s office space inventory are mostly leased to information technology and business process outsourcing (IT-BPO) companies.
“There is a lot of companies that are coming in here that have seen the skills sets and the abilities of Filipinos to do IT work, call center work. When they start to operate here, they continue to grow,” he told reporters.
Likewise, Go said the company is building six more campus-type office towers in its new township, the 34.5-hectare McKinley West. It is set to deliver these projects also this year.
He said each tower is five-storey high with 10,000 square meters of leasable office spaces.
Within three years, Go further said two more office towers are in the pipeline that will add around 140,000 square meters to the company’s office space inventory.
Megaworld now has 19 office towers in McKinley Hill covering around 300,000 square meters of office space inventory.
The company remains to be the country’s biggest office developer and landlord with around 712,000 square meters of office space inventory, mostly leased to IT-BPO companies.
At present, it has over 130 companies in its portfolio of office tenant partners.
“We have a sizable land bank over 100 hectares in Fort Bonifacio. So when the market continues to have a strong demand for office space, we can easily build because we have the land bank,” he said.
“After 2018, that is probably something that we will have to determine still because we always try to keep in step with the market,” he said. (PNA)