MALL operator SM Prime Holdings Inc. on Thursday said it will open its 53rd shopping mall that will be in Cabanatuan City.
The mall will open on Friday and will be SM’s second in Nueva Ecija. The first is the Megacenter, one of the first shopping malls to open in Cabanatuan.
The new SM mall provides an additional 154,020 square meters (sq m) in gross floor area (GFA), expanding SM Prime’s total retail space to 6.76 million sq m in the Philippines.
SM City Cabanatuan is strategically located along Maharlika Highway in Cabanatuan City, the largest city in Nueva Ecija.
“The opening of SM City Cabanatuan is SM Prime’s commitment to be part of the growth of the province. The opening of new malls is timely given the expected higher growth in overall consumption in the fourth quarter. The economy’s sustained GDP growth in the past five years is now spreading to the provinces and we at SM Prime will continue to expand in these provinces that are enjoying high growth, like Cabanatuan City, where we see significant development and huge demand for unserved shopping experiences,” SM Prime President Hans Sy said in a statement.
The mall will open with 90 percent already lease-awarded, leased to various tenants and will serve over 270,000 residents. The shopping mall will have anchor tenants, such as the SM department store, supermarket, hardware, appliance center, Watson’s and Uniqlo.
The four-level mall also features two gardens: The Garden Park, which provides covered shelter; and the Roof Park at the fourth level. The mall will have six cinemas—five cinemas with a 275-seating capacity; one large format cinema with a 525-seating capacity; and 2,500 parking slots for cars and motorcycles. To date, SM City Cabanatuan is the third SM mall to be opened this year, after SM City in San Mateo, Rizal that opened on May 15 and Megacenter.
For the rest of 2015, SM Prime is scheduled to open SM Center Sangandaan in Caloocan and SM Seaside City in Cebu.
The company is also set to expand SM City Lipa in Batangas and SM City Iloilo this year.
By the end of 2015, SM Prime will have 55 malls in the Philippines and six in China with an estimated combined GFA of 8.27 million sq m.