One McKinley completed in one year — developers

The developers of the multi-billion peso One McKinley Place building in the Bonifacio Global City have committed to finish the project within a year, after almost two years in the backburner as a consequence of the closure of one of its major stockholders, Urban Bank.

The corporate vehicle for the project, One McKinley Place Inc. (OMPI), is a 50-50 joint venture between Philippine Townships Inc., the property arm of RFM Corp., and publicly-listed Urbancorp Realty Developers Inc. (URDI), the counterpart property unit of Urban Bank.

But since April 2000, OMPI has been unable to sustain in full-swing construction due to the inability of URDI to act on any financial and operational matters pertaining to the joint venture. It was during that time that Urban Bank was closed down and its investment subsidiary Urbancorp Investments was placed under receivership by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Both companies were majority shareholders of URDI.

With the takeover by the Export and Industry Bank of Urban Bank last year, OMPI is now in a better position to benefit from additional equity infusion from its new owners.

A comprehensive memorandum of agreement (MOA) was recently signed by the parties involved (URDI, Philtown and Exportbank) to resume the project and complete it within a year.

Philtown president and OMPI executive vice president Rally Martinez said the MOA "reflects the overall confidence and commitment of its proponents to the project."

"Although the real estate market continues to be soft, we believe that once we start delivering the completed residential units during the first quarter of 2003, the project will be well positioned for the expected upturn then," he added.

Under the MOA, URDI (now an ExportBank subsidiary) and Philtown agreed to infuse additional equity and raise counterpart financing, to cover the balance to complete the project. The project is currently 70-percent complete and with most of its funding requirements in place, OMPI need not rely on aggressive selling to fund its construction, thereby guaranteeing completion.