Ayala to open 11 new malls in next 2 years
Property giant Ayala Land Inc. is scaling up its shopping mall business with the opening of 11 new shopping malls this year and next, targeting to breach the two-million-square-meter leasable footprint by end-2018.
After the recent opening of the group’s newest shopping center, Ayala Malls 30th along Meralco Avenue in Pasig City earlier this month, six more malls are set to open in Luzon this year.
“We will end the year with over 1.8 million sq m of owned and managed leasable spaces,” said Rowena Tomeldan, head of Ayala Malls group.
“Total cost of these projects is P16 billion, disbursed over a period of three years,” she said.
Next to open this year is Ayala Malls Vertis, a 40,000-sq m upscale shopping mall near the Trinoma area. This is set to open by April this year.
Other Ayala retail hubs set to open this year are:
Ayala Malls Marikina Heights, a 13,000-sq m community center, which will open in May;
Ayala Malls Southvale, a 6,000-sq m strip center, which will open in the fourth quarter of this year;
Ayala Malls Cloverleaf, a 39,000-sq m mall in Balintawak, Quezon City, which will open by October;
Ayala Malls Feliz, a 79,000-sq m mall along Marcos Highway, Cainta, which will open this November, and
One Bonifacio, 21,000-sq m retail center undertaken by Fort Bonifacio Development Corp., a joint venture between Ayala Land and the Campos family’s Evergreen Holdings.
Tomeldan added that four new malls were under development and targeted for opening in 2018. Two of the malls will be in the Visayas and two in Metro Manila.
“By the end of 2018, Ayala Malls’ total leasable area will be two million sq m,” she said. “Expansion in 2018 will be in Bacolod, Cebu, Makati and in the Bay Area in Parañaque.”
The new mall in Makati will rise at Circuit Makati, the estate where the former Santa Ana racetrack used to operate.
In the Bay area, the new Ayala mall will rise at the Aseana City complex adjacent to Pagcor Entertainment City, riding on the vast tourism potential of the future Las Vegas-style gaming strip along Manila Bay. For this project, the group leased from the Wenceslao group a 9.2-hectare property for 45 years.
In Cebu, the new Ayala mall will rise along the Cebu IT Park.
As of end-2016, there were 45 Ayala Malls in operation, creating about 100,000 jobs, including those in anchor stores like Landmark and Rustan’s.
