By VG Cabuag
Property developer Ayala Land Inc. and LT Group Inc., the holding firm of tycoon Lucio C. Tan, will jointly develop a project along the C-5 corridor that is envisioned to become a township development spanning portions of Pasig City and Quezon City.
Ayala Land did not give the details of the agreement. But based on initial information available, the project is a 35-hectare mixed-use development to be undertaken by Ayala Land and Eton Properties Philippines Inc., the property-development arm of the LT Group, based on their joint master plan.
“Our shared vision and commitment to this project will open new opportunities for economic growth, which will contribute to the development of the community,” said Bernard Vincent Dy, Ayala Land president and CEO.
“We are very pleased to be entering into a joint venture with Ayala Land. We believe that this is an excellent partnership that will enable us to build an outstanding mixed-use development which will offer a wide range of property investment and lifestyle options to customers,” Tan, LT Group chairman, said in a statement.
Eton earlier said it is focusing on constructing office buildings, with its projects through 2018 targeting business-process outsourcing (BPO) firms.
The company said it is adding an additional 200,000 square meters of office space in a span of three years, or more than doubling its current offering for the BPOs.
The company has already built some 124,000 sq m of projects in Quezon City and Ortigas Center dedicated to BPOs, all of which are fully occupied.
The company said the bulk of its expansion of office space over the next years is concentrated in the vast 1,000-hectare township of Eton City in Santa Rosa, Laguna.
Eton, one of the lowest revenue contributors in the LT Group Inc., said its income for the three quarters of 2015 reached P197 million, an improvement over the P65 million last year.
Rental income continues to account for a significant portion of its earnings, with all five existing office buildings for the BPO firms fully leased out, the company said.
Ayala Land, meanwhile, is the country’s second-largest property developer. Based on its plan, the company wants to speed up the pace of its growth, both in terms of profits and revenues, by an average of 20 percent per year for the next five years through 2020.
It hopes to increase its net income from just P14.8 billion in 2014 to P40 billion by 2020.
C-5 traffic would worsen with this new township development in this busy corridor.