Property developer Megaworld Corp. said Thursday it plans to build 20 malls over the next five to eight years, mostly within the company’s existing townships.
Megaworld chairman Andrew Tan said in a speech during the 18th Philippine Retailers Association awards night the company would also increase the number of township projects to 20 this year from 15 in 2014.
“These malls and commercial centers will primarily cater to the residential and BPO [business process outsourcing] communities inside our townships,” Tan said.
The 20 new malls are expected to boost the company’s gross leasable space by 600,000 to 700,000 square meters, he said.
Megaworld announced last year it would spend P230 billion to develop various existing townships until 2019. The figure is expected to go up with the launching of five new townships this year.
Tan said he expected the population within the township communities to grow 150 percent to 1 million, including 600,000 residents and 400,000 BPO and office workers.
Megaworld currently has 250,000 residents and 150,000 office workers within its communities.
Megaworld said it was set to launch five new townships this year with a total land area of about 400 hectares. This will bring Megaworld’s total township land area to 3,100 hectares by year-end.
It said the five new townships would include two in Luzon, two in the Visayas and one in Mindanao.
The company also introduced five townships in its portfolio last year, covering almost 1,000 hectares of land. These include Woodside City in Pasig City (12.3 hectares); Southwoods City in the boundaries of Cavite and Laguna (561 hectares); Davao Park District in Lanang, Davao City (11 hectares); Alabang West in Las Pinas City (62 hectares) and Suntrust Ecotown in Tanza, Cavite (350 hectares).