Firm sets P20-B Azure project in Pampanga

Century Properties Group (CPG) is building a P20-billion mixed-use, resort-themed complex in Pampanga with a residential component replicating its Azure community and a beach club designed in collaboration with American socialite and fashion icon Paris Hilton.

“It will become Azure North,” CPG founder and chief executive Jose Antonio told reporters during the launch of Paris Beach Club at the company’s Azure project in Parañaque. “There will be a Paris Beach Club part two,” he said.

The P20-billion estimate is the revenue level that CPG expects to generate from the project, Antonio explained yesterday.

Hilton, who was in town to inaugurate the completed beach club to which she lent her creative inputs, hinted on Thursday that this would just be the first among the many future collaborations with the Antonio family, which leads CPG.

“We are going to launch the project in San Fernando, Pampanga, by mid-year. This is actually very important because from our studies, Pampanga has one of the biggest base of OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) abroad, after Metro Manila,” Antonio said.

He said the project would be built on an eight-hectare property located in one corner of a crucial junction going to the Olongapo-Gapan road where SM and Robinsons malls occupy the other corners.

CPG’s corner will have residential, commercial, office, retail and a convention center, he said. It will also have a retail component based on a “unique” concept, Antonio said.

The company would start building the retail and commercial components of the project first, he said.

The biggest component of the area will be for the residential segment, to be made up of mid-rise towers with about eight to 12 storeys. Antonio said this was still under final planning.

“What’s very important is that whenever we develop in a certain location, we bring a certain lifestyle that will benefit our buyers,” Antonio said.

In the case of Azure in Parañaque City, for instance, he said the buyer even of a one-bedroom unit would be able to enjoy amenities very similar to having a country club membership.

The Azure project will have a total of nine buildings on a six-hectare property that used to be the assembly plant of Columbian Motors and Asian Carmakers. Three buildings have so far been delivered, another three in the finishing stage prior to turnover and two under construction.

Of the eight buildings so far opened to the property market, these were 95-percent sold, Antonio said.

The 32-year-old Hilton heiress, who signed a partnership deal with CPG in 2011 to lend her creative inputs for the design of a multiple level beach club, is back in town to inaugurate the completed Paris Beach Club on Thursday.

Designed for the exclusive use of Azure residents and their guests, Paris Beach Club is a three-level facility built adjacent to the Azure man-made beach with fine sand, simulated ocean waves, a waterfall, a poolside bar and an infinity pool that overflows into the private beach coves at the opposing ends of the development. The first phase of Azure beach has been completed.