Megaworld eyes 1M-sqm office space soon

PROPERTY developer Megaworld Corp. is speeding up the construction of new office towers in its McKinley West township in the southern part of Fort Bonifacio, aiming to breach one million square meters of leasable office portfolio ahead of the 2018 goal.

In a press statement on Wednesday, Megaworld said it had accelerated the construction of six campus-type office towers in the 34.5-hectare McKinley West, which is beside the upscale Forbes Park community.

“We are now experiencing an overwhelming demand for office spaces in our various townships and a big chunk of the demand pie comes from Fort Bonifacio. In McKinley West, the demand is focused on campus-type buildings which have higher efficiency floor plates, easy access to office floors via internal staircases and branding rights for whole building occupiers,” Megaworld senior vice president Jericho Go said in a press statement.

The six towers will have a total of 60,000 square meters (sqms) of office space, and will be part of the 350,000-sqm office space expansion of the Megaworld group in Fort Bonifacio in the next three years.

The six campus-type office towers in McKinley West are: One West Campus, Two West Campus, Three West Campus, Five West Campus, Six West Campus and Eight West Campus. The ground level of each tower will be devoted for commercial establishments.

Pres. Benigno S. Aquino III recently declared McKinley West as a “special economic zone” for information technology (IT) under the jurisdiction of the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA). With such status, certain privileges are granted by the national government to the business owners and investors operating inside the township like income tax holidays, duty free importation of capital equipment and other non-fiscal incentives. On the other hand, real property taxes on land are paid by developers.

“Businesses, especially in the information technology and business process outsourcing (IT-BPO) sector, can now avail of the incentives of a special economic zone when they lease an office space from PEZA-accredited buildings in McKinley West,” Go said.

These six office towers are expected to generate around 20,000 jobs once completed. It will be highlighted with green features to be registered under Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) of the U.S. Green Building Council.

“Megaworld continues to attract more locators to set up or expand their businesses in the Philippines, especially after we built 8 Campus Place in McKinley Hill, which is the first LEED gold-certified BPO office building in the country. We look forward to our LEED certification for the new office towers in McKinley West as well,” Go said.

Megaworld is a leading developer and lessor of office space in the country with over 700,000 sqms of office space inventory today, of which around 300,000 square meters of the inventory are in Fort Bonifacio, particularly in McKinley Hill. Among its biggest office clients are tech and multinational giants like Accenture, HP, Wells Fargo, United Health Group, IBM and Thomson Reuters.

Earlier, the company announced a P20-billion budget to expand its office portfolio in Fort Bonifacio until 2018.

“We are optimistic that we will be able to reach one million square meters of leasable office spaces even before 2018,” Go said.

Megaworld holds around 105 hectares of land in Fort Bonifacio, making it one of the leading landlords in the former military camp. It four township developments in this area are as follows: McKinley Hill (50.4 hectares); McKinley West (34.5 hectares); Uptown Bonifacio (15.4 hectares) and Forbes Town Center (5 hectares).