Keeping the balance between nature, development

One’s home in a place surrounded by trees – this enduring, romantic dream of the fatigued, stressed out-city dweller may finally turn into a reality with the Mount Malarayat Country Estates in Malvar, Batangas, which is soon to start development.

Being developed by the Active Realty and Development Corp. on a sprawling 550,891 sq.m. property owned by GORAM Development Corp., the "country estates" is meant, according to Active Group vice chairperson Maria Cristina Turalba, to be home, or hobby for weekend farmers who long for a getaway place where they can enjoy the bliss of clean air and greenery after a week’s work urban centers."

As a getaway place, the country estates are not really that far away. The project is a pleasant, unstressful 60-minute drive by car along the South Expressway on a weekend, a trip that has been considerably cut short by the Southern Tagalog Arterial Road (STAR) that diverges from the national highway in Sto. Tomas, Batangas.

Mount Malarayat Country Estates is located a few meters away from the town hall of Malvar (a quaint town named after the revolutionary hero) and southeast of the center of Tanauan City. Says Turalba, a certified environmental planner, "The project will be an environmental haven in the eastern area which at the moment has as many as four large industrial estates, seven if you consider the whole of Batangas."

Turalba also points out that the smoothly sloping grounds, with an unimpeded vista of Makiling to the northeast and Mt. Malarayat to the southeast, are fertile volcanic soil hospitable to coconuts, mangoes and other fruit trees, citrus and vegetables and flowering plants. Turalba, who strongly believes in respecting and not disturbing what she calls the "spirit of the place," also advocates the tenet that "one should not impose on the land what it’s not meant to be there."

The Mount Malarayat Country Estates is thus committed to keeping the delicate balance between primeval spirit and viable land development. Lot parcels will have a minimum size of 700 sq m (there are about 285 seleable lots), to allow geberous area for the houses and an almost unlimited garden space.

"We are very confident about our market," says Turalba. These are the people who yearn to see green and breath oxygen-filled air, the corporate executives and professional entrepreneurs residing in the metropolis, the balikbayans who will eventually retire in the country, as well as institutions interested in propagating their environment or back-to-nature interest or causes."

But don’t be mistaken: These are not rustic, backwood farm houses. Mount Malarayat Country Estates is a sophisticated residential subsidivision, with concrete roads, an underground drainage system, a centralized water distribution and irrigation system, overhead electrical distribution system, and such amenities as a country club and a man-made lake.