Property developer Megaworld Corp. will concentrate on building more energy-efficient facilities in its township developments in Metro Manila but will maintain its “regular” buildings in the provinces due to cost consideration.
Jericho Go, Megaworld’s first vice president, said the company’s building developments in Metro Manila will be LEED-certified, which means they will be costlier to construct due to various environmental considerations to become energy efficient.
LEED, short for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a system designed by the US Green Building Council.
Go said Megaworld’s LEED-certified buildings can reach up to 10 in the next two to three years. These include the four buildings in Uptown Bonifacio in Taguig City, the three initial towers that will be constructed in Woodside City at the former Ajinomoto factory in C-5 Pasig and three buildings in Eastwood City in Libis, Quezon City.
“The list goes on. But all our succeeding Metro Manila building will be LEED-certified and LEED registered,” Go said. Megaworld, however, will not build the same type of buildings in its provincial developments due to cost considerations by the locators.
“In the provinces its a different story. BPO [business-process outsourcing]companies go in the provinces [because)]they want to generate more cost savings. Admittedly when you go LEED there’s a premium. We have to do that in Metro Manila, we have to do our part for the environment,” Go said.
Over the weekend, Megaworld participated in the Earth Hour initiative and switched off most of the lights in its first township in Eastwood City in Quezon City. The said initiative was in partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature-Philippines.
Megaworld, controlled by billionaire Andrew Tan, has 10 township developments all over the country, the latest of which are in Cebu, Iloilo and Davao. The company is still talking with other land owners to have more mixed-use developments across the urban areas of the country.
Megaworld earlier said it is expanding its office space inventory this year, adding another 112,000 square meters of leasable space with its current development, as it maintains the country’s No. 1 office developer and landlord.
Around 30,000 sq m of BPO office spaces will be completed in the eighth Newtown Office Tower and another 7,000 sq m in the six-story Two World Center, both in the 28.8-hectare Mactan Newtown by second half of this year.
