SM Prime Holdings, Inc. (SM Prime) opened its 53rd mall in the country, SM City Cabanatuan, on Thursday. This is also SM Prime’s second mall within Nueva Ecija.
The new mall provides an additional 154,020 square meters (sqm) in gross floor area (GFA), expanding SM Prime’s total retail space to 6,762,419 sqm in the Philippines.
“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 4th quarter,” SM Prime President Hans T. Sy said.
He said that “the economy’s sustained GDP growth in the past 5 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 in Cabanatuan City, where we see significant development and huge unserved demand for shopping experiences.”
The mall will open with 90 percent lease-awarded, which are leased to various tenants and will serve over 270,000 residents.
The shopping mall will have anchor tenants such as The SM STORE, SM Supermarket, Ace Hardware, SM Appliance Center, Watson’s, The Body Shop, Surplus Shop and UNIQLO.
The four-level mall also includes two Sky Gardens namely, the Garden Park, which provides covered shelter; and the Roof Park located 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 Supermall to be opened this year, after SM City San Mateo that recently opened last May 15.
For the rest of 2015, SM Prime is scheduled to open SM Center Sangandaan in Caloocan, andSM Seaside City 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 8,269,486 million sqm.
