Philpost open to offers for Quezon City compound

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine Postal Corp. (Philpost) has announced that it is accepting offers to develop its 1.4-hectare Quezon City Central Post Office (QCPO) compound after receiving a proposal for a joint venture scheme from Empire East Land Holdings, Inc. (ELHI).

The compound along NIA Road is near the area where ELHI’s rival property developers such as Ayala Land and Eton Properties are establishing satellite business districts in Quezon City. The Ayalas have their Triangle North of Manila or Trinoma shopping mall at the corner of EDSA and North Avenue while Eton Properties is developing the Eton Centris district in a tract of land bounded by EDSA, Quezon Avenue and NIA Road.

Philpost had earlier received an unsolicited proposal from Empire East to develop its huge Quezon City compound along NIA Road. The Philpost set the minimum value of the property at P50,000 per square meters.

In a public notice last Nov. 28, Philpost said “it now wishes to subject (the joint venture) to a competitive challenge.”

Groups interested to submit a competing offer were urged to submit their Letters of Intent and purchase Terms of Reference (TOR) documents with a non-refundable fee of P300,000.

The Philpost said that it has tentatively set on Dec. 10 a pre-selection conference among interested parties who will submit challenging bids against the ELHI proposal.

The ELHI also participated in a bidding for the privatization of the government-owned 103-hectare Food Terminal Inc. property in Taguig City, which was among the big-ticket items privatized by the Aquino administration this year. Ayala Land won the bid for the FTI privatization with a P24.33 billion offer,  twice the floor price of P10.2 billion while Robinsons Land submitted the second highest bid at P14.66 billion. Empire East offered P11.2 billion for the property.