Robinsons to open 2 more shopping centers

MANILA, Philippines - Robinsons Land Corp.(RLC), the property development arm of tycoon John Gokongwei’s JG Summit Holdings Inc., will open two new shopping centers to bring total mall openings to  seven for its fiscal year ending September 2014, a major feat for the company.

“This is a record breaker in terms of the number of malls opened in a year,” said Frederick Go, president of RLC.

He said the company normally opens just three to four shopping centers a year.

The two new malls, slated for opening in September this year, are Robinsons Place Las Piñas and Robinsons Place Antipolo, which will boost the group’s total mall network to 39 and total gross leasable area to one million square meters by end-September this year.

The two-story Las Piñas mall will rise on a 6.8-hectare lot along the Alabang-Zapote Road and will have a gross floor area of 59,877 sqm.   It will be home to 150 tenants.

Robinsons Place Antipolo, meanwhile, will form part of a 16-hectare mixed-use complex catering to residents in  the towns of Rodriguez, San Mateo, Taytay, Cainta, Tanay, Teresa and Baras  in Rizal.  

 It will occupy a 5.7-hectare lot with a gross floor area of 43,000 sqm and a gross leasable area of 26,400 sqm.   

RLC had already opened five of its planned seven malls this year – Robinsons Place Malolos, its second shopping center in Bulacan; Robinsons Place Roxas in Capiz City, Robinsons Town Mall Malabon. Robinsons Place Butuan and  Robinsons Place Santiago in Isabela.

 For next year, RLC plans to boost its gross leasable area (GLA) by 155,000 sqm with the opening of three new malls and the expansion of two existing ones.  This will bring total mall GLA to 1.077 million sqm by end-September 2015.

The two office buildings – Cyber Alpha and Cyber Beta – are expected to be completed soon which will boost the group’s office GLA by 80,000 sqm.

RLC is building its first office tower in the Bridgetown Business Park, a P30-billion mixed-use development located on a two-hectare property in Libis, Quezon City.

The first building will make available 35,000 sqm of GLA which should boost RLC’s office GLA by 13 percent to 308,000 upon completion in 2015.

For the first quarter of its fiscal year ending September this year, RLC’s earnings dropped 13.4 percent to P1.03 billion largely due to a P316-million one-time write-off from the  damages to its mall in Tacloban due to Super Typhoon Yolanda (P297 milion) and from a fire in Robinsons Galleria (P19 million). Excluding the write-offs, net profit would have risen 13.2 percent to P1.35 billion.