Developer eyes Capitol property

CEBU, Philippines — Cebu Landmasters Inc. has expressed its desire to develop a recovered prime provincial property near the Cebu IT Park during a meeting with Governor Gwendolyn Garcia recently.

“Well, they expressed their interest to participate in any bidding for the development of several strategically-located and highly valuable properties of the province,” Garcia told reporters on Tuesday.

“Here is a homegrown… developer that can now be at par with other developers from Manila,” she said.

Garcia said that the developer manifested its desire to develop the 6000 square meters provincial lot in front of the IT Park.

It can be recalled that last year, the Provincial Board passed Resolution No.14-11045 authorizing Garcia to sign a memorandum of agreement with Cebu Holdings lifting and cancelling the restriction of the province from developing the 55-car parking lot in the area.

Aside from this, the governor also said that CLM is also eyeing at developing the 849-square meter lot located at Jose Maria del Mar Street within Cebu IT Park that used to be leased to Innoland Development Corp.

During the early months of Garcia’s administration, she discovered that the lot had been “illegally” leased to Innoland. Not only that, a P25-million showroom had also been built by the company on the property despite the lease’s near expiration.

Because of this, the contract between Innoland and the provincial government was terminated with the promise that Innoland, due to its show of good faith, will still be able to participate in the bidding of the property.

“We initially thought that we would offer this for lease since there is already an existing building but they opened my eyes to the possibility of also including development there so that it widens the area and gives the interested developer more flexibility,” Garcia said.

Garcia mentioned that once terms of references for the bidding of all prime provincial property is completed, the provincial government will call on all developers so they may be adequately informed.

The development of the properties, according to the governor, will most likely fall under a Build, Transfer, Operate (BTO) scheme between the province and the winning developers.  JMD (FREEMAN)