David among Goliaths

Here’s another living proof that to be successful in business, one doesn’t have to be big.

After developing a highly successful medium-sized mall in Bacoor, Cavite, Cuevasville Realty Development Corp. is all set to open this September another one in Imus. And two months before its opening, the Imus mall is already 80 percent occupied.

With the likes of SM Properties and Robinsons Land dominating the Cavite province with their ‘mega malls,’ why is there still room for smaller players like Cuevasville?

Ambassador Felimon R. Cuevas, the man behind Cuevasville and the FRC malls, may be relatively new in the mall business but he is certainly not new in the real estate development sector.

For a long time, he has focused his efforts and resources in constructing and then leasing out commercial and residential buildings. He then shifted to the development of residential subdivisions and malls two to three years’ back which proved to be his cup of tea.

The first phase of his subdivision project in Molino consisting of 257 lots has already been sold out, thus, the need to open a second phase with 320 lots. And about 40 percent of his buyers come from families where the father or a sibling is an overseas Filipino worker (OFW).

The OFW phenomenon is bringing home the purchasing power to Cavite and the rest of the Calabarzon area, which is also the reason why malls are mushrooming in this part of the country. Another reason is that the industrialization of the region has resulted in Southern Tagalog folks improving their quality of living and Metro Manilans working in Laguna, Cavite or Batangas ending up finding a house nearer to their workplace. These people end up spending their income in the Cavite malls or investing their hard-earned money by leasing stalls at the Cuevasville malls which offer rates that are 10 to 15 percent lower than those offered by SM and Robinsons.

While the FRC malls may dwarf in comparison to the mammoth SM and Robinsons malls, constructing a medium-sized mall is not cheap. Ambassador Cuevas says that for the FRC mall in Bacoor, which is four storeys high and sits on a 15,000 sq.m. property, he spent about P200 million. Another P600 million was spent for the Imus project, which is also four storeys high with one underground basement but is located on a much bigger property of P37,000 sq.m.

He revealed that Puregold, owned by Lucio Co, has already leased the two floors of the FRC Supermall in Imus. The remaining top two floors, meanwhile, are 80 percent occupied.

Ambassador Cuevas’ new-found partnership with Co will extend to another mall of the Cuevasville group which will be set up very near the Lucena, Quezon grand terminal. He said he has already acquired a 3.8 hectare property where he is putting up starting November this year a two-story mall which will be ready in a year’s time.

The Lucena mall could prove to be a much bigger gold mine for the group considering that as much as 10,000 to 12,000 people use the grand terminal each day. The terminal also brings in people from as far as Marinduque, Romblon, and Masbate.

This early, there are plans for Cuevasville to devote a part of the property in Luzon to building a 100-room transit hotel for commuters who utilize the terminal and want to spend the night before continuing with their travel as well as those simply passing through.