Megaworld, the country’s largest developer and lessor of office buildings, has accelerated the construction of six campus-type office towers in the 34.5-hectare McKinley West township in the southern part of Fort Bonifacio.
The six towers will have a total of 60,000 sqm of office space and will be part of the 350,000 sqm office space expansion of the property giant in the entire Fort Bonifacio during the next three years.
Jericho Go, Senior Vice President of Megaworld, said: “We are now experiencing an overwhelming demand for office spaces in our various townships, and a big chunk of the demand pie comes from Fort Bonifacio.
“In McKinley West the demand is focused on campus-type buildings which have higher efficiency floor plates, easy access to office floors via internal staircases and branding rights for whole building occupiers.”
The six campus-type office towers in McKinley West are One West Campus, Two West Campus, Three West Campus, Five West Campus, Six West Campus and Eight West Campus.
The ground level of each tower will be devoted for commercial establishments.
Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III recently declared McKinley West as a “special economic zone” for Information Technology under the jurisdiction of the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA).
As a special economic zone, certain privileges are granted by the government to business owners and investors operating inside the township, such as income tax holidays, duty free importation of capital equipment and other non-fiscal incentives. On the other hand, real property taxes on land are paid by developers.
“Businesses, especially in the IT and Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPO) sector, can now make use of the incentives of a special economic zone when they lease an office space from PEZA-accredited buildings in McKinley West,” added Go.
These six office towers could generate around 20,000 jobs once completed. It will be highlighted with green features, to be registered under Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) of the U.S. Green Building Council.
“Megaworld continues to attract more locators to set-up or expand their businesses in the Philippines, especially after we built 8 Campus Place in McKinley Hill, which is the first LEED gold-certified BPO office building in the country. We look forward to our LEED certification for the new office towers in McKinley West as well,” said Go.
Megaworld is the largest developer and lessor of office spaces in the Philippines with more than 700,000 sqm of office space inventory today, and around 300,000 sqm of inventory in Fort Bonifacio, particularly in McKinley Hill.
The world’s top IT and BPO companies are among its biggest office clients, including Accenture, HP, Wells Fargo, United Health Group, IBM and Thomson Reuters.
The company previously announced it was allocating P20 billion to expand its office portfolio in Fort Bonifacio until 2018.
“We are optimistic that we will be able to reach one million sqm of leasable office spaces even before 2018,” confirmed Go.
Megaworld remains the biggest single developer and landholder in the former military camp, with approximately 105 hectares of land for its four township developments, namely McKinley Hill (50.4 hectares); McKinley West (34.5 hectares); Uptown Bonifacio (15.4 hectares) and Forbes Town Center (5 hectares).
Pictured above are PEZA Director General Lilia B. de Lima (right) and Megaworld Senior Vice President Jericho P. Go showing the accreditation certificate for McKinley West during the signing ceremony held at the PEZA head office in Pasay City recently.
