CEBU IT Park’s retail landscape is about to transform, now that Ayala Malls Central Bloc, the Ayala Group’s newest mall in Cebu City, opens to the public Friday, Dec. 6, 2019.
Developed by Cebu Holdings Inc. (CHI), the new five-story mall located at the Cebu IT Park, home to the city’s young workforce, houses more than 300 shops set to open in the coming weeks, said Jeanette Japzon, CHI corporate communications head, at the media preview of the mall on Wednesday, Dec. 4.
The new P9.5 billion Central Bloc development is banking on the Cebuano young market, as it introduces retail shops, restaurants, entertainment and wellness centers, among others.
The three-hectare mall complex, which is Ayala’s second mall in Cebu and fifth in the Visayas and Mindanao, will also house the 214-room Seda Hotel expected to open early next year and two office towers.
Japzon said the mall has at least 45,000 square meters of retail gross leasable area.
Some of the stores set to open in the mall are Metro Supermarket, Shawarma, Rose Pharmacy, Bench, Leylam, Ayer’s Lechon and Ding How.
The mall also features four cinemas, a chapel and a startup business incubator dubbed as Trading Bloc.
Central Bloc is in the middle of the 27-hectare Cebu IT Park, which has become a hub for Cebu’s information technology and business process management sector.
The Ayala Group opened its first mall in Cebu, the Ayala Center Cebu, in 1994.
CHI is the Cebu-based unit of Ayala Land Inc. It is the developer of Cebu IT Park and Cebu Business Park, the city’s two busiest business hubs.