SM Prime Holdings, Inc. on Friday is opening its second shopping center in Cabanatuan, as part of the property holding firm of the Sy family’s drive to capitalize on the growth prospects in the provinces.
Its 53rd mall in the country, SM City Cabanatuan expands SM Prime’s footprint in Nueva Ecija after SM Megacenter Cabanatuan, the integrated property developer said in a disclosure yesterday.The four-level mall, which has 154,020 square meters (sqm) of gross floor area (GFA), increased SM Prime’s total retail space to 6.76 million sqm in the Philippines.
“The opening of SM City Cabanatuan is SM Prime’s commitment to be part of the growth of the province. The opening of new malls is timely given the expected higher growth in overall consumption in the fourth quarter,” the disclosure quoted SM Prime President Hans T. Sy as saying.
“The economy’s sustained gross domestic product growth in the past five years is now spreading to the provinces and we at SM Prime will continue to expand in these provinces that are enjoying high growth, like in Cabanatuan City, where we see significant development and huge unserved demand for shopping experiences,” Mr. Sy said.
Cabanatuan, the largest city in Nueva Ecija, is located between the provinces of Pampanga, Bulacan, Tarlac and Aurora.
SM City Cabanatuan is 90% occupied by various tenants, including SM Store, SM Supermarket, Ace Hardware, SM Appliance Center, Watson’s, The Body Shop, Surplus Shop and Uniqlo.
The mall will have six cinemas, consisting five cinemas with a 275-seating capacity and one large-format cinema with a 525-seating capacity. It has 2,500 parking slots for cars and motorcycles.
For the rest of the year, SM Prime is scheduled to open SM Center Sangandaan in Caloocan and SM Seaside City Cebu. The company is also set to expand SM City Lipa in Batangas and SM City Iloilo this year.
By the end of 2015, SM Prime will have 55 malls in the Philippines and six in China with an estimated combined GFA of 8,269,486 million sqm.
Next year, SM Prime is spending P65 billion in 2016 with plans to open six malls with an aggregate GFA of 430,669 sqm. They are located in San Jose Del Monte in Bulacan, Commonwealth in Quezon City, Trece Martires City in Cavite, Tuguegarao, Puerto Princesa in Palawan, and Urdaneta in Pangasinan.
SM Prime is part of SM Investments Corp., which has core businesses in retail, banking and real estate. The family also has interests in gaming, geothermal energy and infrastructure.
Shares in SM Prime slid 10 centavos or 0.47% to P21.40 apiece yesterday.