‘Bloody banker’ rock-solid force behind Rockwell Land

(Starting the first week of January, we’re featuring men who stand out in—and change the landscape of—the property field in our “Builders and Movers” series. — Ed.)

A trip to Cebu and a parking lot convinced Nestor J. Padilla to finally fulfill his childhood dream.

The president of upscale property developer Rockwell Land Corp. admitted to having almost lost a lifelong ambition of building structures, such as bridges, as he went straight to becoming a “bloody banker” right after college.

“When I graduated, I started working as a money market trader and that was fun so I completely forgot what was truly close to my heart—which is building. It was many years after that an opportunity came about. You don’t look for it, it just happens,” Padilla said in an exclusive interview with Inquirer Property.

Padilla recalled that he spent 16 years building a career in the banking industry under the Ayala Group, Malaysia-based Inter-finance Berhad and finally, major Indonesian conglomerate the Lippo Group.

It was only in what would be his last four years of stay in Indonesia did the Lippo Group gave him the reins over the Lippo Village, a 500-hectare new township development in West Jakarta, and later on, Lippo Land, a publicly listed property development firm involved in new township developments, high-rise office and residential condo developments and resorts.

However, the real taste of property development came when a headhunter from the Philippines invited him to work for the Lopezes—while he was then still heading Lippo Land.

“I said I’d pay for my ticket just for the privilege of meeting them. But I was not really interested (then),” Padilla said.

Short vacation

“I was able to meet with the late Eugenio ‘Geny’ Lopez, Oscar Lopez and Manolo Lopez and I told them I would like to work for you guys but unfortunately, I’m very happy with what I was doing in Indonesia. It was seven months after that meeting, when I was in the Philippines for a short vacation  and Geny sought me and asked me to join them,” he related.

The condition that Padilla had set then was that he had to go to Cebu to think about the offer. If he would be swayed to stay in the Philippines during his Cebu trip, he would gladly accept the Lopez family’s invitation. Otherwise, it would be pointless for him to be asked again.

“After a week I called Geny and I said let’s talk because I think I’m ready to come home. And he asked me what changed my mind because I was then dead sure about not coming home. I simply told him it was the parking lot,” Padilla said.

“(Geny) asked, what do you mean the parking lot? I said I’ve seen the developments of the biggest developers here in town and they still do the parking lots the same way they used to do it. I’ve been gone for how many years by then, it was already 20 years. So I figured, if they haven’t upped the ante, upped their standards, we can easily beat them by just doing a better standard,” he explained.

“I just used the parking lot as a benchmark and the rest, as they say, is history. We then created Rockwell Land and created new standards in landscaping, new standards in the way you design your buildings, new standards in the streetscape both the hardscape and the softscape—everything that we do is all about upping the ante and raising the standards,” Padilla said.

Padilla has since been hands-on with the creation of Rockwell Land in 1995—from the cleanup of the old thermal power plant site to the design and masterplanning of the projects within the 15.5-hectare property in Makati City. This old area has been developed into a high-end commercial business district now known as the Rockwell Center.

Layman’s point of view

“I’m not an engineer or an architect. I took up Business Management, but I’ve always told everybody that the key to being a successful developer is to look at it from a simple layman’s point of view. When I meet with architects and consultants, I ask layman questions. When you do that, you know that the end product is something that the layman will appreciate,” Padilla related.

To date, Rockwell Land has earned that distinct and elusive mark of prominence, prestige and respect as it continues to break new grounds and raise the bar that keeps on redefining luxury living in the Philippines. Its residential condominium developments include The Manansala, Joya Lofts and Towers, Number One Rockwell, and The Grove by Rockwell.

Greatest reward

Padilla said he still feels proud upon hearing compliments about Rockwell, noting that this is his greatest reward, even after 16 impressive years of heading the Lopez-led property firm. He related that one of the greatest compliments he had received came from young foreign students, who right away noticed how different Rockwell was from the rest of the areas they had seen in Metro Manila.

“If children could say that that to me is the greatest reward you can get. It’s nice to get compliments from a banker, from a professional. But to get a compliment from an elementary kid, wow, you know that’s true because children do not lie,” he added.

Padilla is thankful that he had decided to accept the offer from the Lopezes as he has found a way to live his childhood dream.

He feels that his greatest achievement, his contribution to the development of the Rockwell Center was not just in helping plan and build the towering residential and commercial structures that have since changed the Makati skyline. Rockwell Land was able to build one of the most desired communities in the metro that is self-sufficient and self-contained.

“I’ve always shared with them that planning a building or something like this is difficult; selling it is just as difficult, building it, maybe even more difficult. But creating the community that’s science and art combined and that, I think, is what we’ve achieved here. That people can copy our roads, trash bins our lights, but they cannot copy our community, that I think is what sets us apart,” Padilla concluded.