"THIS southern city is a good area for large scale investments," said Tony T. Aquino, president and CEO of Ayala Land Inc. (ALI), during the launching of ALI's latest project in Iloilo City on Wednesday.
He said “tremendous growth in the past few years showed that Iloilo City is ripe for our P15 billion infusion in the next 10 years.”
ALI's master-planned mixed-use community, its own Atria Park District, will integrate residential, retail, and business clusters, as well as health care and educational institutions in a live-work-play environment in Iloilo City.
Aquino said that ALI is expanding its presence in Iloilo to cost over P15 billion in investments until 2018 in a total planning area of 21 hectares.
ALI is building a residential condominiums community component with 509 units in two clusters of towers and storeys costing more than P9 billion and covering 5.5 hectares along Barangay San Rafael, Mandurriao district.
Early part of the investments include the P6 billion Iloilo Techno Hub center for business process outsourcing offices completed in 2011 and a residential subdivision in Pavia, Iloilo.
Iloilo is the regional center of Western Visayas and has a very good agricultural sector, center of education, medical facilities and good infrastructures. It has a very nice road system, disaster management, and good government contribution to the growth areas.
"The people here are proud of its Esplanade project along the Iloilo River which is a good place for people to congregate and the Atria Park District is just a walk away to all amenities around the area aimed to reduce amount of carbon dioxide," Aquino said.
The latest project is under the Avida Land Corp, which is a subsidiary of ALI consisting of parks and landscaped areas, commercial and office establishments, an Ayala hotel, condominium towers and storeys and institutional areas including UPMC, a modern health care facility.
From its construction on the third quarter of 2013 to operation by 2016, Atria Park District is estimated to generate close to 10,000 jobs of mostly local hired workers in Iloilo.
Client targets in the next 10 years include overseas Filipino workers, retiree Ilonggos abroad, and those living in Manila with Ilonggo roots who wanted to have a place to stay while in Iloilo.
Aquino was accompanied during a press conference by Senior Vice President and group head Lilit Tumbocon of ALI Vis-Min and superblock projects, Avida Land Corp President Chris Maglanoc, ALI Vice President and Chief Architect Joel Luna and ALI Vice President Cora Dizon, head of business development and strategic planning commercial business group.