Evan McBride, chief financial officer of the Global Gateways Development Corp. (GGDC), said a 24-hour free bus service provided by his company has started ferrying passengers daily to the CGC from nothing just a few months ago.
CGC is adjacent to the Clark International Airport (CIA) and occupies 177 hectares of prime land in the 2,400-hecater Clark civil aviation complex formerly known as Industrial Estate 5.
“There are a little over 4,000 employees that show up to work every day there,” McBride told members of the Capampangan in Media, Inc. at the “Balitaan” media forum organized in cooperation with the Clark Development Corp. at the Bale Balita here last Friday.
He clarified that most of the employees are not call center agents. “That’s an area I would like a little bit to dispel,” he said.
“What I would like to point out is our buildings were built to the highest quality in the entire country. You literally can’t find buildings where you could say they are much better. They are Grade A buildings with pre-certified Gold in Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) and we believe we will ultimately be certified platinum because we have so many points now,” McBride explained.
“The reason we build such high-quality buildings is because we are not pursuing call centers. We are not pursuing just a certain target market,” he pointed out.
“They are mixed. A lot of them work for outsourcing companies but not necessarily in call centers,” he added.
“What we are pursuing are the global companies,” he said.
McBride said their first anchor locator is a company called “Task Us, a global outsourcing that provides exceptional back office support and customer care solutions to some of the world’s most notable brands and disruptive companies.”
He said Task Us, a USbased corporation, turned their building into what now looks like a Google campus.
“They have bean bag chairs and colorful decorations. They have an actual bar in the middle of the office floor, a day-care, a gym and a sauna,” he said.
McBride said Task Us gets over 140 unsolicited applications for employment per day and call center is just a portion of their business.
“They are not just a call center but it’s really a more or higher value added outsourcing,” he said.
The BPO industry has a turnover over of 60 plus percent sometimes a hundred present but Task Us have just a tiny fraction of that because they treat their employees well, he said.
McBride said the next three Grade A buildings will be done in July or August next year.
“Then it will be a fully connected walkway with retail on the lower floors which is almost like a mall.”
He said the whole 28,000 square meters platform for the five building is all underground parking.
“There is no podium parking in those buildings but huge parking underground and not even by the building across the whole site,” he said.
This is planned to be a fully mixed-use city at par with world class international cities so we will have a Gardens of the World that we are building which will be almost like a theme park and botanical garden because green is a big component of the design, Mc-Bride said.
“We will have dormitories that we are building for BPO employees. One of the goals here is not to be inaccessible to the employees,” he said.
“We want actual living spaces built within the city that are directly within the city so that the employees that fill the city with jobs can actually walk to work or bike to work,” he explained.
McBride said a hotel for businessmen is a priority project as well as a fi ve star quality hotel. McBride said they are mulling to open an access road to SM City Clark which is adjacent to the CGC, which is strategically located in this freeport.
“We’d love to open up our perimeter fence to SM,” he said.
“If you look at the other cities they are porous. We need more access points especially with the transport hubs,” he said.
“We are already working with the group that is planning the Northrail extension and that terminal will be right in the middle of our site close to the SM,” he said.
“So, you think about efficiency when that opens in 2021,” he pointed out.
McBride said the Northrail extension from Bulacan to Clark is on track for the opening in 2021 as declared by Bases Conversion and Development Authority president/ CEO Vince Dizon.
“When it (terminal) opens, the very first stop from the new CIA terminal going to Manila will be our site,” he said.
“It’s incredibly efficient. If you have an office in any of our Grade A offices, you can literally fl y-in, go a few steps on the train and then it drops you off in the middle right next to your building,” he said.
“It’s just a minute in the first stop from the terminal,” he added.
McBride said the CIA has a catchment basin nearly as large as NAIA in Manila.
“To me it’s less important to connect the two airports than it is to make sure that everybody in the north or everybody that’s putting up offices in the north can get in and out of the Clark airport quicker,” he reasoned.
“The connection is great for connecting the country and for better access throughout the country,” he said reasoning that a rail system connecting the CIA to cities north of Luzon is a much better option.
CGC history
McBride said in 2008, the Global Gateway Development Corp. (GGDC) a Cayman Island based company leased 177 hectares of land for a 50- year contract on what was categorized as Industrial Estate 5.
“That is the basis on which all of the development of the city’s master plan is found,” he said.
“It’s never been under a Kuwait regime. It was once named after the Kuwaiti emir just to honor our biggest investor in the fund which are Kuwaiti but the actual fund was managed by a couple of Americans and other foreigners overseas,” he explained.
“I was one of the Americans that was here from day one,” he added.
McBride said Peregrine Construction and Development Company was a contractor.
“Peregrine president Dennis Wright introduced us to the land and from that point on we really work hard to do our own due diligence,” he said.
Dennis Wright and Peregrine were never the owners of the project, he said.
They were the engineering procurement contract manager for basically just the horizontal phase of the project, he added.
“So, the first thing that we did after the master plan is put in world class infrastructure. That was when they (Peregrine) was involved,” he said.
McBride said the original master plan was done by Architect Felino Palafox, Jr. “The revised master plan is now being done by Jojo Tolentino,” he said.
“One of the hurdles that we had in the original lease agreement was we needed to spend the equivalent of at least $100 million before we would be eligible for the renewal of the additional 25 years,” he said.
“I can tell you we have surpassed that multiple times already so hundreds of millions of US dollars equivalent have been spent in the project,” he said.
