Major property developer Ayala Land Inc. plans to open at least three regional shopping malls in 2018 as it continues to expand its commercial leasing business.
Ayala Land head of malls group Rowena Tomeldan said in a chance interview over the weekend the three malls included a huge shopping complex at the Aseana City complex adjacent to Pagcor Entertainment City.
The new mall will give Ayala Land a presence in Pagcor City, which is being developed as the Las Vegas-style gaming strip along Manila Bay.
“We will soft open Ayala Malls Bay Area late next year,” Tomeldan said. “The mall will have more than 200,000 square meters of leasable space. However, we will only open phase 1 one of the mall which is about 17,000 square meters and a big portion of the mall will open in 2019.”
The mall is located within a nine-hectare complex being leased from the Wenceslao Group. Aside from the huge mall, other developments within the complex include an office building for business process outsourcing companies and a 12-story hotel with at least 325 rooms.
The other malls slated for opening in 2018 are in Circuit Makati and Bacolod City.
Ayala Mall Capital Central, situated on the provincial capital of Bacolod, will have roughly 50,000 sq. m. of leasable space.
Meanwhile, the new mall in Circuit Makati, an estate development where the former Santa Ana racetrack used to operate, will have 50,000 sq. m. of leasable space.
Ayala Land this month opened Ayala Malls Feliz, a 79,000-sq. m. mall along Marcos Highway, Cainta, and Ayala Malls Marikina Heights, a 13,000-sq. m. community center.
Other malls that Ayala Land opened in 2017 were Ayala Malls Cloverleaf, a 39,000-sq. m. shopping center in Balintawak, Quezon City, Ayala Malls Vertis North in Quezon City and Ayala Mall The 30th in Ortigas Center, Pasig.
The property company has been building up recurring-income sources, including hotels, and office developments to account for 50 percent of earnings over the next couple of years.
Early this month, Ayala Mall, in partnership with Zalora Group, Asia’s online fashion store, said it would roll out ‘pop-up’ stores in January 2018 in a bid to attract online shoppers.
A ‘pop-up’ store is a short-term sales space operated by an online merchant.
Ayala Land registered a net income of P17.8 billion in the first nine months of the year, up 18 percent year-on-year, boosted by record-high sales and steady growth in leasing income.
Ayala Land’s nine-month consolidated revenues grew 16 percent to P98.9 billion, from P85.49 billion a year ago, as real estate revenues rose 15 percent to a record P96.4 billion from a year ago level.
Residential sales surged 28 percent to P60 billion, while office for sale climbed 44 percent to P6.7 billion. Sales of commercial and industrial lots contributed P4.8 billion, up eight percent from a year ago level.
Reservation sales in the first nine months of the year amounted to P94.2 billion, which international sales accounting for 20 percent.