Golden Week

City of Dreams Manila, the integrated gaming and entertainment partnership between the SM group and Macau’s casino giant Melco Crown, is expected to open its doors on Oct. 1 this year instead of the earlier announced mid-year opening.

This targeted debut is calibrated in time for the so-called “Golden Week” in China, a period when everyone goes on a holiday break (similar to the Filipinos’ Holy Week). This seven-day holiday period (Oct. 1 to 7) commemorates the country’s founding anniversary as the People’s Republic of China.

This suggests that despite the diplomatic chill between the Philippines and China, the SM-Melco tandem expects to woo many of China’s high-rollers to this new playground.

“City of Dreams Manila”—carrying the same brand as Melco’s existing entertainment hub in Macau—will have hotel towers offering 950 rooms, including VIP and five-star rooms, 20,000 square meters of gaming space, up to 365 gaming tables and 3,300 slot machines. With Melco’s entry, the gaming component was upgraded from the original allocation of just more than 240 gaming tables and 1,450 slot machines. It will be the second gaming complex to open in Pagcor City after Solaire Resorts of billionaire Ricky Razon-led Bloomberry Resorts Corp.

The hotel component will have three brands upon opening. The first two have so far been announced: The chef-centric boutique hotel Nobu (backed by no less than Academy Award-winning actor Robert de Niro) and Australian billionaire James Packer’s Crown Towers. The third brand will be announced very soon. Doris Dumlao

Credit for BGC

The tug-of-war between Taguig and Makati over Bonifacio Global City may be quiet these days after a Court of Appeals gag order on both LGUs.

But if you ask the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA), the two cities were surely trying to move heaven and earth to gain control over the upscale property.

According to BCDA president and CEO Arnel Casanova, much of the credit for converting what used to be just bare tracts of land in Fort Bonifacio into the prime business hub it is today should go the state-run agency, which master-planned the area.

Casanova said the BCDA-led development of the 300-hectare BGC helped jack up property values in Taguig.

“Before we started the BGC development, the real estate values in Taguig and the surrounding areas were about P5,000 to P10,000 per square meter. Now, the value of the land there ranges up to P300,000 per sq m.”

Another perk, Casanova said, was that developers paid for maintenance of the streets as well as the security in their respective BGC properties.

Even without shelling out maintenance costs for BGC, Taguig earns revenues from business taxes and real estate levy, he added.

“About P4 billion out of the P5-billion budget of Taguig is generated from BGC,” Casanova said.

Many establishments are also transferring to BGC since it has lower rental rates than Makati.

“Now, there is a tightening of office space in BGC. The vacancy rate is very minimal, less than 3 percent. There’s much demand for more development in the area for office, residential and mixed uses,” Casanova disclosed. Ben de Vera

Sephora in PH. Maybe

Wavw after wave of foreign fashion and makeup brands are coming to the Philippines and Sephora, the popular international beauty retailer, could be next.

Ladies, listen up. Sephora, with its wide range of makeup and other beauty products, is reaching out to Southeast Asia through the online network of Zalora, which has established a foothold in the region’s fashion and beauty e-commerce market.

Harry Markl, regional managing director of Zalora, had said that eventually Sephora’s large range of fashion and beauty brands would be available on Zalora.

Launching in Singapore and Malaysia, this will be the first time Sephora will be available for customers to purchase online in the Southeast Asia region, with plans to expand to Thailand in mid-2014.

What, no Philippines? Fret not. “While Sephora will launch on Zalora in Singapore and Malaysia first, there are plans to eventually expand to other Zalora markets in Asia Pacific within 2014,” Zalora said, adding that it has a presence in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Australia and New Zealand. Riza T. Olchondra

Power needs

The issue of high electricity prices and the threat of brownouts this summer have brought to fore the urgent need to build more power plants and keep up with growing demand. The Department of Energy can’t agree with this more.

The huge private capital needed (read: Billions of dollars) to construct just one generation facility, not to mention the period of time involved (around 36-42 months), makes the sector very risky but essential to the economy.

That’s why despite a delay of almost two years, Redondo Peninsula Energy Inc. (RP Energy) is still keen on pursuing its 600-megawatt Subic project to also help stabilize supply and bring down prices in the Luzon grid by 2018.

The company is addressing a Writ of Kalikasan case that went through the Court of Appeals and has been pending for some time with the Supreme Court.

RP Energy majority owner Meralco PowerGen Corp. is also targeting 2018 for the commercial operation of San Buenaventura Power Ltd Co., a 500-MW supercritical coal-fired power plant in Mauban, Quezon, being developed in partnership with EGCo of Thailand. It will be the first power plant of its kind in the country.

Despite being a late entrant, Meralco’s power generation arm has been aggressive in the sector, taking a 20-percent stake as well in Global Business Power Corp., the biggest power producer in the Visayas region.

Biz Buzz heard that the company was also developing another 2×600-MW supercritical coal-fired power generation facility in the southern part of Luzon to be operational by 2019. When completed, this will be one of the biggest power generation facilities in the country.

Now if only the we could have a more rational dialogue with our environmental activists … Daxim L. Lucas

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