Robinsons Land steps up high-rise resd’l projects

MANILA, Philippines - Robinsons Land Corp., the property arm of the Gokongwei family’s JG Summit Holdings Inc., is stepping up the construction of high-rise residential projects as it scales back its 30-Gohotel five-year expansion plan.

Frederick Go, president and chief operating officer of RLC, said the company is taking a more aggressive stance in the residential development business given an uptick in sales in the past four months.

RLC has launched less than P4 billion worth of residential projects so far this year, lower than its annual target of P6 billion.  For next year, however, the company aims to build more to take advantage of the continued strong demand for vertical developments.

These include the newly-launched Sapphire bloc as well as remaining towers in existing projects like Sonata, Trion, Magnolia in New Manila.

To rise on an 8,400-square meter property in Ortigas Center bounded by Sapphire, Garnet and Onyx streets, Sapphire Bloc is RLC’s biggest lifestyle development project to date that will offer four residential towers.  The first two towers called the North and West Towers, will house a combined 890 units with the first batch of units slated for turnover to buyers by 2016.   

 “We used to be a conscious developer.  Sales were down before but now we’re seeing very strong growth. So that for me is a big deal. Our sales are dramatically picking up because we beefed up our marketing department,” Go said.

The last two months of our fiscal year ended September were very good, we’re up over 80 percent.   October and November sales were also good,” Go said.

After opening five Gohotels in and outside Metro Manila, RLC is slowing down the expansion of its budget hotel line.  From its previous target of five Gohotels per year, Go said RLC would reduce the number of launches to three a year.

 “We think that some provincial markets are not as big as we initially thought,” Go said.

There are currently five Gohotels across the country, located in Mandaluyong, Palawan, Bacolod, Dumaguete and Tacloban.

Three new Gohotels will rise next year - the 200-room Cyberspace Alpha in Mandaluyong and the 100-room Gohotel in Iloilo.

Go said the company is also keen on building a Gohotel in Bohol but it has yet to acquire property there.

RLC recently acquired a two-hectare lot in Libis, which it plans to convert into a residential and office complex.  The property can accommodate up to seven buildings and is expected to give a new source of growth for the company.

For the commercial centers, Go said the group would build four this year and three in 2014 as the group expects to further grow its presence and capitalize on strong consumer spending and a growing business process outsourcing industry.

The expansion of the retail portfolio will increase the group’s total mall leasable area to a  over a million square meters in two years.