Fifty square meters is too small to really be stylish and go beyond the basics of furnishing a space. Or so it would seem. But left in the adept hands of a developer and an interior designer, 50 square meters can be fabulous. After all, size is relative – it’s big for a city condominium unit or an apartment built after the mid-1980s; it can also be the size of a garage in a Forbes Park home.
Century Properties, the biggest privately owned real estate company in the country, takes 50 square meters and shows us how to do it properly in its development Canyon Ranch, located at the San Lazaro Leisure Park in Carmona, Cavite. San Lazaro Leisure Park, whose racetracks were developed by the Manila Jockey Club, is a 77-hectare property, 17 of which were co-developed into Canyon Ranch by San Lazaro and Century.
Canyon Ranch features several home collections, all named after affluent California communities such as Atherton, Berkeley, Fremont, Delano, Irvine, Stanford, and the smallest cluster, Napa.
Launched last December, the homes in the Napa phase are designed as duplexes, each unit measuring 50 square meters, and as such the two units actually look like one house from the outside. It’s ideal for first-time homebuyers or, with its price tag of P1.8 million, it’s for people who want a second home outside the city but don’t want to put all their money into it. To launch the Napa collection, Canyon Ranch teamed up with BMW, which provided the cars to be driven to Carmona (compact cars, but luxury Beemers just the same) and to add to the "small is beautiful theme," iPod Nanos provided the music in the vehicles – with, of course, a Beach Boys playlist.
The two Napa model units were designed by Miguel Rosales and Chat Fores. Miguel, who’s known for his love of graphic design, antique prints and bold design statements, this time toned it down. His unit is a study in simplicity, of ingenious use of glass, hidden storage spaces and restraint. As he puts it, storage spaces don’t have to be seen (look, Ma, drawers under the bed!) and small doesn’t have to be drab.
Chat’s unit is a mix of contemporary with select Oriental touches. European design doesn’t work, she says, at least not as well as modern Oriental. Once she hurdled the challenge of how to lay out the small space, coordinating the furnishings was a walk in the park.
The Napa units are two stories each, with a toilet and bath on each floor. Two bedrooms are on the second floor; the living and dining rooms and kitchen are on the ground floor, with an option to squeeze in another bedroom there. What’s interesting is the use of glass to partition the two bedrooms upstairs. Instead of wooden or concrete walls (they take up space), glass is used, giving the space breathing room, making it appear larger than it actually is.
Marco Antonio of Century Properties, who’s in charge of the company’s horizontal developments (his brother Jigger Antonio is on top of the vertical projects, such as the 37-story South of Market Towers in Fort Bonifacio which they’re developing with the Meridien Group), says that in developing Canyon Ranch they decided to offer a wide spectrum of price points to satisfy homebuyers.
They’re also bent on building a community, not just selling off the land. "Canyon Ranch is building all the houses. A lot of communities offer only lots for sale. The problem with that is that these projects become ghost communities, which is what we’re trying to avoid. If you noticed, we passed through a huge development on the way here – that project sold out around seven to 10 years ago, but there’s close to zero residents. That’s because it lent itself to speculative investors, there was no set deadline on when they should build their houses. Here in Canyon Ranch, we build the house when there’s a sure buyer."
It’s true. We’ve seen a few developments that have been bought by Manila’s rich and richer which today are still virtual ghost towns. They have but a few houses standing and unused clubhouses – as a homebuyer it’s good if you like your house to be the only one on a street, but a disaster if you want to be part of a community.
So what Canyon Ranch does is build the house for the buyer, which also assures that all the homes keep with the theme. "We’re 90 percent sold in phase 1 while phase 2, which was launched in December, is already 20 percent sold," Marco says.
If Napa is a neat little package, Atherton proves that with big you can even have more spectacular looks. Atherton homes have four bedrooms, five toilets and baths, a balcony and lanai, and a four-car carport on a 280 sq.m. lot. It’s located on the ridge area, which has the best views of Laguna de Bay, Carmona Hills and Mt. Makiling.
The Wharton-educated scion explains that the higher-priced home collections (from P11 to P16 million) are located on the ridge, so apart from the natural views, they have an unobstructed view of the race tracks. You can be having tea on your balcony and cheering for your favorite thoroughbred at the same time.
"In most places around the world, when a development is tied to a race track or a race track amenity, property prices appreciate," he says. "The 17 hectares of Canyon Ranch are divided according to house types. But all of them have California design. We thought this would appeal to local buyers and Filipinos coming from the US. They’re used to and like this type of architecture. Here, they get homes at a fraction of the price that they would have to pay for the same level in the US. Here, our homes can start from as low as $35,000 – the price of a car for them. Median home price in the US is $350,000 to $400,000 (P19 to P22 million) ."
While a Cavite address may seem like a distant galaxy to people used to being right smack in the middle of Makati, Canyon Ranch is actually not that far in terms of distance (25 kilometers from Makati) or travel time (25 minutes from Makati, but then again we were driving Beemers).
"The infrastructure in the south has improved in the last five years," says Marco. "SLEX is expanding from six to eight lanes and should be completed in two years."
Master-planned by Century Communities, a subsidiary of Century Properties, Canyon Ranch boasts "TLC" which, according to Marco, is "terrain, location and climate." The terrain is rolling hills and it’s elevated, the former giving homeowners uniquely designed homes (one model home, for instance, has an elevated dining room and porch) and the latter unobstructed, dramatic views. The location is equi-distant from Makati and Tagaytay or as Marco puts it, "During the day you can work in Makati, and at night have dinner in Tagaytay." And the climate? "We’re actually only officially one degree warmer than Tagaytay." Another first is that Canyon Ranch is going to be the first wifi community in the country.
"We have only 17 hectares, which assures exclusivity for homeowners. Some projects are 15 times our size, which means that if you want to sell your property you have to compete with 14 other sellers."
Also coming up at Canyon Ranch is a commercial strip called The Village Center and it will house 30 retail and dining establishments and entertainment outlets that will have a direct market of around 700 homes once the entire development is sold, and the people who visit the race track.
"There are around seven golf courses in a 20-minute radius from Canyon Ranch, and also malls like Alabang Town Center, SM and Festival Supermall." But it is still the racetrack that gives Canyon Ranch a truly unique setting.