Megaworld fast-tracks completion of 6 McKinley West office towers

MANILA, Philippines - Tycoon Andrew Tan-led Megaworld Corp. is accelerating the construction of six campus-type office towers in the 34.5-hectare McKinley West township in the southern part of Fort Bonifacio.

The six towers will have a total of 60,000 square meters of office space, and will be part of the 350,000 sqm office space expansion of Megaworld in the former military base in the next three years.

The company announced earlier it was allocating P20 billion for the expansion of its office portfolio in Fort Bonifacio until 2018.

Megaworld senior vice president Jericho Go said the property firm is optimistic it could reach one million square meters of leasable office space even before 2018 given strong demand for its projects.

“We are now experiencing an overwhelming demand for office spaces in our various townships and a big chunk of the demand pie comes from Fort Bonifacio. In McKinley West, the demand is focused on campus-type buildings which have higher efficiency floor plates, easy access to office floors via internal staircases and branding rights for whole building occupiers,” Go said.

Megaworld’s six office towers in McKinley West are One West Campus, Two West Campus, Three West Campus, Five West Campus, Six West Campus and Eight West Campus.

The ground level of each tower will be devoted for commercial establishments, the company said.

McKinley West is a “special economic zone” for information technology  under the jurisdiction of the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA).

As such, incentives are given to locators inside the township such as income tax holidays, duty free importation of capital equipment and other non-fiscal incentives.

“Businesses, especially in the information technology and business process outsourcing sector, can now avail of the incentives of a special economic zone when they lease an office space from PEZA-accredited buildings in McKinley West,” Go said.

According to Megaword, the six office towers could generate around 20,000 jobs once completed.

“Megaworld continues to attract more locators to set up or expand their businesses in the Philippines, especially after we built 8 Campus Place in McKinley Hill, which is the first LEED gold-certified BPO office building in the country. We look forward to our LEED certification for the new office towers in McKinley West as well,” Go said.

 To date, Megaworld has over 700,000 square meters of office space inventory today, and around 300,000 square meters of the inventory are in Fort Bonifacio, particularly in McKinley Hill.

Megaworld claims to be the single biggest developer and landholder in the former military camp with approximately 105 hectares of land for its four township developments, namely McKinley Hill with 50.4 hectares, McKinley West with 34.5 hectares, Uptown Bonifacio with 15.4 hectares and Forbes Town Center with five hectares.