Amid the hustle of city life, individuals deserve spaces that allow them to relax and unwind alone or with their loved ones or peers. Recognizing such needs, several developers have created areas that enable resort-like or nature-centric living not just for brief days of vacation but even for a lifetime.
Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC), headed by Manuel V. Pangilinan, also has its share in such efforts through Landco Pacific Corp. (Landco), a company that has stood out in creating developments that house leisurely living experiences.
Landco was founded in the 1990 by Alfred Xerez-Burgos, Jr. with reportedly only P500,000 capital. From there, the company first focused in planning and managing shopping malls like Pacific Malls, The Tutuban Center, and Filinvest Festival Malls.
Soon, Landco started establishing upscale and leisure developments, which became their specialty later on. In 1997, the company established the popular Peninsula de Punta Fuego in Batangas, a private seaside resort community development with over 250 homes that cost up to $1 million each.
In 2001, Landco completed Terrazas de Punta Fuego in Batangas, which includes Amara en Terrazas, the country’s first luxurious seaside condominium.
Landco also pioneered Leisure Farms in Lemery, Batangas in the early 2000’s. This concept further blossomed in 2003 with the establishment of Landco’s Ponderosa Leisure Farms in Cavite, a garden residential community.
In the years that followed, the company’s leisure developments have spanned across the country, from Cabanatuan to Zamboanga.
“Our journey to excellence was formed with the purpose of providing exceptional world-class communities, especially envisioned and built for you,” Landco President and CEO Erickson Manzano said. “The essence of Landco is that it looks at leisure developments as something that is one of its kind, something that is not available anywhere else,” he added.
Landco started its ties with the Pangilinan-led MPIC. In 2021, after receiving its highest net income, Landco became a wholly-owned subsidiary of MPIC.
Commenting on MPIC’s and, thus, MVP’s entry into the business, Mr. Manzano said that they at Landco, as part of the MVP Group of Companies, feel how much he cares about the people under his stewardship.
“Taking his (MVP) lead, Landco endeavored to take care of its own. At the start of the pandemic, there was a public commitment by Landco’s top management to its employees that no one will lose their job. And we are proud to say that we’ve lived up to that promise,” Mr. Manzano added.
As a result of their previous successes, Landco expanded their developments by building beach towns in several regions.
Beach resort Calatagan South Beach (CaSoBe) in Batangas is built both as a residential community and a business hub. The resort features open spaces, promenades, and parks. Moreover, the resort is designed with elements that set them apart from other lifestyle resorts, such as street art, lamp posts, and roads all in cool colors.
Club Laiya, a leisure resort in the seaside district of Batangas, is known for displaying a lot of open spaces and promenades, where leisure seekers can enjoy parks and retail landscapes. With its cutting-edge technology, the resort makes the balance of working and leisure feasible.
At this time of rebound for both tourism and the overall economy, Landco takes great responsibility for spreading its sustainability agenda within its real estate ventures.
Landco’s recent projects and developments, including those under its hospitality arm Millennial Resorts, are centered around sustainable development, mixing the standard of sustainability and luxurious living.
Properties under Millennial Resorts are known to provide unique and world-class resort experiences. These include their capsule-like rooms branded Cocoons in CaSoBe and Club Laiya and the Aquaria Water Park in CaSoBe.
“The essence of Landco is that it looks at leisure developments as something that is one of its kind, something that is not available anywhere else,” Mr. Manzano said. “When you look at the Philippines right now, we are not yet at the level where the buyers will pay a premium for sustainable development… We know that our buyers will not pay a premium for sustainable development but we do it anyway because it’s the right thing to do, we do it for our differentiation.”
“The great thing about Landco is wherever we are, we have to be ‘the’ or one of the biggest developments in that area. Now moving forward, we just have to carry on that legacy,” he added. — Angela Kiara S. Brillantes
