The Truth and The Pop Up

Idle land, a new trend in real estate development and advanced fitness and mixed martial arts training come together in one of the most sought areas of Metro Manila to introduce new ways of doing business and sports. And at the heart of it all will be the first Alliance Training Center, the home gym of ONE Championship heavyweight champion Brandon Vera.

Airy Mobile is pioneering modular commercial real estate (in layman’s terms, a portable mall) with The Pop Up on the sprawling 11,000-square meter property on the corner of Katipunan and Xavierville Avenues in Quezon City. Basically, it is a lower-cost, low-impact way to get a quick return on unused land. Preparing the property is a complicated process, but James Thomas and his partners have gotten it down to a science. They level the land, lay down concrete tiles, get water, power and sewage in place, and set up shops and retail outlets made from shipping containers. However, these modules are improved with insulated glass display windows and more durable and attractive automotive paint and visually attractive LED lighting inside and out.

“Actually, a lot of our inspiration for modular commercial real estate comes from disaster relief,” says Thomas, a food, beverage and marketing expert. “My main partner’s family lives in Nicaragua, so they’ve seen mass housing, rapid deployment; it’s something they’re accustomed to. And in the Philippines, as in many places, real estate is becoming more and more expensive.”

Thomas, a native New Yorker, could not find any large open property there, but discovered several lots in the Philippines, properties that were being land-banked, used as investments, or not yet ripe for development. He made the decision to move to Quezon City for this pilot project.

“In the Philippines, people land bank. There’s no incentive to sell these lots,” Thomas explains. “In the nicest areas, in the most expensive areas in the Philippines, you do have nice lots. Case in point, the weekend markets in Makati. Those are prime pieces of real estate, and you realize they’re only using them a couple of days of the week.

The best part is the flexibility Aury Mobile’s system affords. The retail outlets are installed on rails so that, when shops close for the day, they can simply be pushed to one end of the property to make room for events at night, pulling in different markets and revenue streams. And when the contract runs out, it’s easy to just pack everything up and move elsewhere. In fact, the only permanent structure anchoring The Pop Up will be Brandon Vera’s massive, state-of-the-art gym.

Vera is bringing the most successful MMA gym of the last few years, Alliance Training Center, to the site. It will occupy 650 square meters of the area, rising three floors built with forty-foot containers. The ground floor will have traditional gym equipment; the second floor will have a glass swimming pool and mixed martial arts equipment. The third floor will house a full-sized octagon. Vera was aghast at the outlandish prices and poor customer care he has experienced and heard of in the most expensive gyms in the country. He claims that, when it opens in March, Alliance’s most expensive membership will only cost P 8,000.

“Aside from the logical reasons, it is really my dream. I just dreamt about building world champions here, sharing the lifestyle of MMA and what it can do for a community,” says the former UFC champion in the vernacular. “I’ve seen what it can do all over the world, and I wanted to bring that vibe and that culture here.”

Vera could not accept how he’s seen the local fitness industry being managed on a commercial level. He strongly advocates expecting more from your home gym and its instructors. He says the situation forced his hand to open a gym immediately, and to target five more in 2018. He says you should get results, personalized care, medical attention if you get hurt, clean facilities and professional service.

“All the young kids and even the older generation who’s paying attention, we don’t want high blood, we don’t want high cholesterol, we don’t want diabetes or gout anymore; we don’t want kidney stones in our life,” says the 15-year veteran fighter. “Everybody now is waking up and understanding that we need to take better care of ourselves.”

Vera, who still rabidly enjoys training and fighting, has talked to several world-class fellow fighters, some of whom are at the tail ends of their careers, and most are excited at the prospective of teaching their craft in the Philippines, and discovering the sport’s next superstar. He’s done the numbers, and all the financials are solid. But what will truly set Alliance further apart will be cryotherapy chambers and having doctors on call. This was among his candid answers when The Star asked what would make the facility stand out.

“Aside from the fact that we have the sexiest gym in the world?” Vera laughs. ”Aside from the fact that we’re the only gym in the world with cryotherapy? Aside from the fact that we have expat coaches from world championship teams and world champions themselves? Aside from the fact that it’s my gym? I don’t know, kuya. I don’t know what else sets us apart.”

Full-body cryotherapy has become very popular in north America and other countries for its vast array of health benefits. Three minutes’ exposure to sub-zero temperature in a controlled environment has been known to minimize injury, joint inflammation and fatigue, almost immediately reduce lactic acid levels in muscle tissue, improve post-surgical healing, and mitigate the effects of other ailments. 

Airy Mobile’s projects also prime the property prior to its ultimate development. The property value will have increased in price, gained public attention, and attracted a regular but diverse flow of traffic. Throughout their medium-term contracts, Airy Mobile gets as wide a spread as possible, pulling in different constituencies with various high-profile events from retail sales, concerts, exhibits and even live sports events. Vera himself will be doing demos and fighting demos at The Pop Up.

All these are how The Truth plans to develop Filipino world mixed martial arts champions from scratch in the next three years. He says there are athletes who are already superstars, but they just don’t know it yet.