SM Prime to build P5-billion retail complex in Cebu property

MANILA, Philippines - SM Prime Holdings Inc., the country’s largest shopping mall operator, has earmarked P5 billion over the next three years to develop a retail complex within the reclaimed 240-hectare South Road Properties (SRP) in Cebu City.

SM Prime president Hans Sy said the company intends to focus on the development of the recently-acquired 28-hectare lot within the SRP. Plans are also underway to acquire an additional five hectares which will require an investment of P1 billion.

The P5-billion investment represents a quarter of the P20-billion spending program that SM Prime has allotted for a mixed-use development project at SRP over a 15-year period.

The shopping center is estimated to have a gross floor area of 250,000 square meters, which would become the biggest retail complex in Visayas and Mindanao. It is targeted for completion in 2012.

Apart from the mall, also being planned are a 60,000-sq.m. convention center as well as hotels and condominium buildings possibly to be constructed under SM Development Corp. (SMDC), the listed middle-income condominium developer of the SM Group.

SM Prime acquired the property for P11,000 per square meter or nearly P3 billion. 

SM Prime is spending P12.1 billion this year for the opening of five new malls nationwide and one in China. Slated for opening this year are Calamba, Laguna; Masinag, Antipolo; Tarlac, Novaliches and San Pablo, Laguna which will provide 279,228 square meters in total gross floor area.

The company is scheduled to open its fourth mall in China, SM Suzhou in the fourth quarter of the year. Located in the province of Jiangsu. SM Suzhou will have a GFA of approximately 70,000 sqm.

Two new malls programmed for opening in China in 2011 and 2012 are Chonggqing and Zibo which will add to SM Prime’s three existing malls -  SM Xiamen, Jinjiang, and Chengdu.

SM Prime is targeting to put up two malls each year in China to bring the total number of malls in the mainland to 10 by 2014 as it seeks to take its malls overseas public.

By end this year, SM Prime expects to have a total of 41 malls with total gross floor area of 4.5 to 4.8 million square meters. Its malls currently have a foot traffic of over 2.5 million per day. 

For next year, SM Prime will start building malls in General Santos City, Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City, Lanang (second mall in Davao City) and its second mall in Cebu to be located in La Consolacion, South Reclamation project.