Real estate conglomerate Ayala Land Inc. has announced that it would be investing PHP6 billion (USD138 million) to establish a mixed-use, integrated, beachfront community in Lio in world-famous El Nido, Palawan.
According to Ayala Land president Bernard Vincent Dy, who held a press briefing last Friday, the new Lio Resort Town will comprise residential, mid-range and luxury hotels, resorts and commercial developments, which will be operated by its Ten Knots Development Corporation unit.
Only a third of the 325-hectare property—which also boasts of a four-kilometre beach stretch—will be developed to maintain the “pristine” nature of the area, Ten Knots president Laurent Lamasuta told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Ayala Land entered the El Nido market four years ago via the acquisition of the Ten Knots’ parent company, which had been operating the Lagen and Miniloc island resorts in 2010. Today, the company offers a total of 192 hotel rooms in El Nido, where they also own the Apulit and the newly built Pangulisan resorts.
“The [El Nido] town is kind of exploding,” added Lamasuta, who noted that there had been a 28 percent in El Nido’s visitor arrivals in the past year.
The new Lio development will include its own airport terminal, jetty and lounge. Ayala Land announced at the media briefing that it would also make sure that the property will be pedestrian-friendly.
Named this year’s Best Developer at the recently concluded second annual Philippines Property Awards 2014, Ayala Land will develop first phase of the prime property over the course of the next five years. The project broke ground in March of this year.
Lio is one of Ayala Land’s current mixed-use community projects outside Manila. In May, the Ayala family-owned firm announced that it would be building a 1,125-hectare township called Alviera in the Pampanga province, featuring high-end to low-cost housing, which aims to replicate the success of its Nuvali development in Santa Rosa, Laguna, a 60-minute drive from Manila.
Property prices are expected to grow by 8 percent this year in the Philippine capital, raising concerns of a potential real estate bubble, according to United Kingdom-based think tank Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), which cited the rising housing costs, low inflation rate and rapid market growth as possible early signs of an overheating market.
“It appears the Central Bank may be struggling to keep up with the situation, having only just constructed an index to measure the level of property prices,” the CEBR report stated, adding that “economies with already high consumption rates, such as the Philippines, take care to avoid artificially raising the standard of living.”
El Nido image credit: John Seaton Callahan / Getty Images
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