MANDALUYONG | Twin Oaks Place [43Fx2|res]

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Unilab’s Jeffrey Campos goes green and vertical
September 14, 2009


Jeffrey Campos, the most landed of the three Unilab heirs, is belatedly joining the high-rise business, embarking on not just one but three towers at the same time.

Campos, who inherited the vast landholding company Greenfield Development Corp. with the death of taipan Jose Yao Campos, will build a twin-tower, 43-story residential condo in Ortigas and another high-rise at the former Crispa outlet at the corner of Buendia and Export Avenue beside the 24-hour Tropical Hut restaurant.

The Ortigas towers Twin Oaks Place is the first project in the 15-hectare redevelopment of Edsa Central, popularly known as Crossing, at the intersection of Epifanio de los Santos Avenue and Shaw Boulevard that the Campos heir wants to become the greener equivalent of Ayala Center in Ortigas.

According to a Campos press statement, Twin Oaks would rise on a 2,500-square meter section that should be more pedestrian-friendly, despite being situated along the jeepney-and sidewalk-choked section of Shaw Blvd.

"No other developer has taken community planning as seriously as we have done here in Greenfield District," said Campos, referring to the 15-hectare Edsa Central development that he said would simulate "the benefits of living within gated communities like those of plush subdivisions in Makati."

The 15 hectares are actually two adjoining lots, six hectares from what had been for the longest time the headquarters of United Laboratories on United and Sheridan streets, and the nine-hectare former warehouse and parking lot behind it.

Like Ayala Center and Greenbelt, there would also be a series of interconnected walkways between buildings within Greenfield while underground, there would be interconnected basement parking levels "that mimic the on-ground network" that should get the drivers and their passengers faster out of Greenfield into, whoops, the daily gridlock of Pioneer and St. Francis streets.

Still, "the other business districts cannot benefit from extensive community planning basically because most buildings and infrastructure are already in existence and, if at all considered, community planning has been done only at the tail-end of their developments," said the Campos statement.