Property firm eyes Visayas BPO triangle

Tycoon Andrew Tan-led Megaworld Corp. is grooming its three huge township developments in Iloilo, Cebu and Bacolod into a “Visayas BPO (business process outsourcing) triangle” – envisioned to bring to the office property market 225,000 square meters of new space by 2020.

“We are targeting around 175,000 square meters of office spaces for the BPO industry in these three key cities in the next three years to form the so-called Visayas BPO Triangle,” said Megaworld senior vice president Jericho Go who leads the group’s office property business.

But by 2020, Go said the target would be to bring up Megaworld’s office inventory in the Visayas to 225,000 square meters (sq.m.), depending on market demand. Once completed, Megaworld expects to generate around 50,000 full-time direct jobs in the BPO sector in these Visayan cities.

“If we talk about direct and indirect jobs, we see around 300,000 for Cebu, Iloilo and Bacolod by end-2019. These include jobs that can be generated within our townships such as those from transport and retail,” Go said in a press statement on Thursday.

Megaworld’s ongoing 30-hectare development in Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu, called The Mactan Newtown, will have an inventory of office space 80,000 sqms by next year with the opening of two more office towers. These two new office towers are Tower One Plaza Magellan (to be completed this year) and Pacific World Tower (to be completed in 2017). These two towers offer additional 34,000 sqms of office space.

Other towers that had been previously launched were One World Center, Manulife Center and 8 Newtown Boulevard.

Go also cited the growing preference of BPO locators in Cebu to be in Mactan Island because of the traffic problem and congestion in Cebu City.

He cited the accessibility and the new terminal of the Mactan Cebu International Airport as among the reasons for BPOs to consider Lapu-Lapu City as an alternative location for their operations. (See separate story.)

In the 72-hectare Iloilo Business Park township, inventory of office space will reach around 33,000 sqms by the end of this year with the expected completion of one more office tower, Three Techno Place, which offers around 8,700 sqms of office space. The first four office towers, namely Richmonde Tower (5,800 sqm), One Global Center (9,400 sqm), Two Global Center (9,100 sqm) and One Techno Place (8,700 sqm) have been fully leased.

Two more office towers are up for completion next year up to 2018. These are Two Techno Place (10,000 sqm) and Festive Walk Office Tower (12,000 sqm).

“By end-2018, we will have around 65,000 square meters of office spaces in Iloilo Business Park, and we will have more first time locators lined up for Iloilo,” said Go.

In Bacolod, the company plans to build office towers in its 34-hectare The Upper East township with an initial inventory of 30,000 square meters. The group has started the land development of the area, which was formerly the site of the Bacolod-Murcia Milling Co.