Century Properties spending P1.5B for new residential project

High-rise condominium developer Century Properties Group Inc. is investing P1.5 billion to build a residential building with the interior design of Italian luxury fashion house Missoni.

The 52-tower residential building, Livingstone, is the fourth tower to rise in CPG’s six-tower Pasig riverside Aqua Private Residences project in Mandaluyong City, which was estimated to cost a total of P7 billion.

In a press briefing on Friday, CPG executive vice president Jose Marco Antonio said the group, through subsidiary Century Limitless Corp., was ready to bring to the market additional residential units in Acqua, following the market success of the first three towers—the 43-story Niagara, 45-story Sutherland and the 47-story Dettifoss.

The upcoming residential buildings in Acqua, designed as a riverside “residential eden” amid an urban jungle, are all named after the great waterfalls of the world. The residential units in Livingstone, named after the most majestic waterfall in Africa, are expected to be turned over to buyers by 2016.

The six-tower Acqua project brings to the local market new property inventory with sales value of P15 billion, of which Livingstone will account for P3.5 billion, Antonio said.

Acqua Livingstone will offer 645 units for pre-selling prices averaging P145,000 per square meter for the first tranche. This means the smallest unit of 27 square meters is selling for P3.9 million while the largest unit with 140 sqm is selling for P20.3 million.

“In the Philippines, Century has found a market appreciates high design and haute couture living,” Antonio said.

Missoni, founded in 1953 as a knitwear label in Italy by Ottavio and Rosita Missoni, grew into a fashion empire run by three generations of the Missoni family. Globally recognized for its creative use of patterns and prints, Missoni earned the acclaim of the fashion world throughout the decades for elevating knitwear to an artistic form, and for its inventiveness and consistently progressive style.

In 1996, the Italian fashion house diversified into furniture, home accessories and interior design through the brand MissoniHome. It was one of the first fashion lines to branch out into home lines like Versace, also a partner of CPG in another residential project.

There are also two Missoni-branded hotels in the world, one in the Edinburgh, Scotland, and another in Kuwait.

CPG plans to sell the units to domestic end-users such as young upwardly mobile professionals, overseas-based Filipinos and foreign buyers. With 70 percent of CPG’s sales coming from the international market, Antonio said CPG had the biggest overseas market share among Philippine high-rise condominium developers.

“We feel we’re following the money trail,” he said.

The Livingstone tower offers the rich and colorful MissoniHome-designed living space.