CABANATUAN CITY – With some 25,000 tricycles plying here daily and a daytime population of over one million people, SM Prime Holdings had to revise the design for its mall here, company officials said Wednesday.
From the original 65,000 square meters, the project was expanded to 135,000 square meters after e revision that took more than two months, said Annie Garcia, president of SM Supermalls as her group presented to media perspectives of the mall which construction is scheduled to start on the first week of May this year and set for completion within the first quarter of 2014.
“We are really excited. Gusto namin talaga at magagalak din ang mga kababayan natin dito sa Cabanatuan kaya talagang pinaghuhusay namin ang disenyo,” she added.
Engr. Bien Mateo, vice president for mall operations, said their initial draft was indeed smaller until the company had a full grasp of business activities in this city, dubbed as the trade and education center of Nueva Ecija.
“Sa amin pong pag-aaral, napag-alaman po namin na ang population po ng Cabanatuan ay 300,000 sa gabi pero umaabot po ito ng mahigit one million sa araw so lumabas na rin po yung aming pag-aaral sa traffic impact study,” Mateo said, saying they had to incorporate all these inputs to their new design.
“Nilakihan po namin ang mall, nilakihan po namin ang parking at naglagay po kami ng mga convenient facilities,” he said.
Realizing the volume of tricycle, Mateo said, they now have a parking space to accommodate 1,000 tricycles and 2,000 other vehicles. The mall will have a basement parking, he explained.
The explanations were made amid doubts on the supposed delay on the construction that was earlier reported to start before the end of 2012.
After a decade-long negotiation since 2002, SM Prime Holdings Inc. has announced in July last year that it is pushing through plan.
Among the anchor tenants expected in the mall are SM Supermarket, SM Department Store, Jollibee, Chowking, Greenwich, Pizza Hut, KFC, and Mang Inasal, BDO, Watsons, Ace Hardware, National Bookstore, Ideal Vision, Bench and Penshoppe.
Garcia said that the four-storey SM City Cabanatuan will feature spaces for food court, fashion boutiques, cyberzone, shoe stores, bookstores, jewelry stores, novelty stores, cinemas among others.
But SM Cabanatuan City, she said, will have the look of their “best and latest designs,” which are found only in few of their branches, particularly of having sky garden on its top floor which was first set up in North EDSA and in the recently opened SM City Lanang in Davao. “We are incorporating the latest features (in SM City Cabanatuan),” she said.
Eugene Mintu, assistant city administrator, assured the readiness of this city to accommodate the influx of people to be generated by the mall. “You can see the road networks that we constructed even before the mall is established,” he said.
SM Prime also owns a 25-hectare property in Cabanatuan’s Barangay Santa Arcadia.
Meanwhile, SM department store president Jorge Mendiola said they intend to hire at least 90 percent of their estimated 5,000 employees from the city locals. “Kung pwede nga ay 100 percent, basta qualified,” he said.
