More jobs, BPO clients ahead for Cyberzone

USING  sledge hammers, Cebu Gov.  Hilario Davide III, Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama and  a Filinvest  official yesterday smashed concrete blocks in a  portion of a wall along Geonzon Street to free access to  the   entrance of the Cebu Cyberzone, whose operation has been delayed for months.

Cyberzone president Joseph Yap, who led the ceremonial demolition, said at least a thousand jobs  will be created for Cebuanos when the BPO complex is  fully  operational.

“Breaking  the wall leads to great opportunities,” he said.

About half of the 240-meter wall was voluntarily torn down days earlier by Cebu Property Ventures and Development Corp.  (CPVDC) as part of  an agreement forged with the Province of Cebu that ended  a nearly two-year conflict with

Filinvest over the  perimeter wall  which limited direct access to and from the Ayala-managed I.T. Park on the other side.

The Filinvest Cyberzone, a joint venture of Filinvest and the Province of Cebu,  was built with the facade of its first tower facing the concrete wall in barangay Apas, Cebu City.

With the obstacle removed, a business process outsourcing (BPO) provider, a major fastfood company and some retail outlets are expected to start operations and create more jobs in the first BPO building of Cyberzone.

The BPO building was launched six months ago, but could not attract locators because of the wall that separates it from the 27-hectare Cebu IT Park.

Allan Alfon, Filinvest Land, Inc. vice president for strategic planning, said they expect to sign a lease contract with a BPO company soon.

The BPO intends to lease around 7,000 square meters of office space, expandable to 10,000 square meters or about half of the building’s gross leasable area.

“This is good as done. They already made a deposit,” he told Cebu Daily News. He would not identify the company.

The retail space on the ground floor is full, with a fastfood company leasing four slots for its different brands, Alfon said. Other slots have also been taken.

“By next month, either the retail outlets or the BPO locator would be ready to move in,” he added.

Alfon said Ayala-led CPVDC tore down half of the wall as provided for in a memorandum of agreement signed early this year with the Cebu provincial government and Cyberzone. CPVDC, a subsidiary of Ayala affiliate Cebu Holdings, Inc., developed the Cebu IT Park.

The remaining wall will go down only upon the completion of two more BPO buildings within Cyberzone, Alfon said.

“Under the MOA, the province agreed to retain half of the wall while construction (of two more BPO buildings) is ongoing for security reasons,” he said.

Cyberzone committed to build  four BPO buildings on the 1.2-hectare province-owned lot in Apas under a build-operate-transfer (BOT) scheme.

In exchange for the demolition of the wall, additional access points will be opened for the Cebu IT Park by the Province of Cebu.

Three areas have been identified. Discussions are ongoing to determine the exact alignment of these additional access points, Alfon said.

“It’s all good. Everybody should be benefited,” he said.