© Provided by La Tercera
The ‘Market Garden’ will be located on the third floor, and will have fruit trees, vines and orchards.
In about three more weeks, the Mercado Urbano Tobalaba (MUT) project will have its first opening to the public. It will be the inauguration of certain spaces that will be delivered to the city as a square in Encomenderos, in addition to the expansion of some sidewalks. Everything, accompanied by a sample of urban art under the name “A Window to the Heart of MUT”, which will take over the showcases, of what will soon be the facades of the stores that will face the street. These showcases will serve as a support for twelve illustrations developed by different artists who will interpret how the project can contribute to making Santiago a more sustainable and humane city. All this, in what It is today the main national real estate development, with an investment of around US$500 million.
It was about five years ago when the work of the Territoria group began its development in the quadrant made up of Apoquindo, Encomenderos, Roger de Flor and El Bosque, in the El Golf neighborhood. Originally, the property was in the hands of the real estate company linked to Francisco Rencoret and Ignacio Salazar, in addition to the Calvo Puig family; However, The mixed project that mixes commerce, market and offices attracted in 2015 the investment fund Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), which that year took over 80% of the development. Currently, the so-called Territoria Apoquindo is the only work that ADIA has on this side of the world.
The initiative began its commercialization stage in the middle of last year. They called it ‘socialization of the project’. With a pandemic through, they decided to leave. And although they evidenced a moment of greater uncertainty during the last six months of the exercise, that pulse began to be left behind. “Confidence in doing business is recovering,” says Territoria’s partner, Ignacio Salazar. “(That) has coincided with a better visualization of the project, which has been seen in the tenants’ willingness to make decisions that until recently had been suspended,” he adds.
And they went out to explain the project. “Because it is a completely different concept from what is known in the market, it had to be explained in special detail,” says Salazar.
He explains that the commercial process has been characterized by a high degree of interaction with future users. “We want those who are part of MUT to share the vision of sustainability, the aesthetic values of its design and present unique proposals, which are carefully curated by Territoria”, says the executive.
At the end of the year, the first part of the complex will open, to inaugurate the rest during the first half of next year. Only the incorporation of one of the four office towers that the place will have and whose construction was delayed will remain: today it is 30% complete and will enter the market in 2023.
A market of 100 stores
Two areas make up Mercado Urbano Tobalaba: a commercial sector of just over 24,000 useful square meters for lease and an office section with an additional 34,500 square meters. Everything, between 20,000 square meters of green areas, whose main exponent will be in a large square on the third floor. It is ‘Jardín del Mercado’, with fruit trees and orchards.
The commercial part will have 300 stores, the center of which will be a food and product market that will be available in a hundred small-producer stores. All this will be distributed between level -3, where the internal connection with the Metro will be and a convenience sector with a small supermarket, home improvement, pharmacies, and the 5th floor. On level -1 there will be a whole axis of creative industries , with decoration stores, design, among others. Today, all that space is being marketed directly by Territoria.
The project is already in the completion phase and, therefore, the future operators of commercial spaces have already physically seen what was previously only shown on plans. All of this has accelerated negotiations to secure locations. Particularly for occupying the spaces of the MUT market, indicated in the project.
Currently, they have more than 40% of the commercial area practically placed: in the final stage of negotiation or review of contracts. And that they are more than eight months away from the opening, when, says Salazar, traditionally these projects begin to specify interest in joining in periods closer to the debut. “There will be a significant acceleration in contract closings from six months onwards,” he adds. Although they cannot give names due to confidentiality agreements, he does anticipate that they will be present from gastronomic entrepreneurs, direct producers, creators of concepts that have not had the opportunity to express themselves physically, along with consolidated brands with new proposals. In his opinion, all this mix will form a group that is not present in any shopping center in Chile. And although in the initial stage the brands that will be there would not be debutants in the country, they do not rule out that in the future MUT will be the spearhead of new flags.
“The -1, -2 and -3, as well as the street levels, are estimated to be open to the public at the end of this year.” He adds that the levels of the plaza from the third floor, up to the fifth, will debut during the first half of next year.. “Therefore, the emphasis has been placed on leasing underground spaces that we are selling directly in Territoria, with very good results,” he says.
Every day they are interested to see the place. The project is located in a high flow area. It is directly connected to a new Tobalaba Metro station through which about 150,000 people pass each day.
Three buildings, three themes
There is no exclusivity. Unlike emblematic projects such as Torre Costanera, the marketing of MUT is not exclusive. In other words, today the main brokers They have the pass to offer them, a process that Territoria is also directly promoting. The value is around 0.64 UF per square meter.
The offices will be distributed in three buildings of 20 floors each, which unfold from the sixth floor of the project upwards, on the commercial part. Each tower will have a different vocation. One will be MUT Apoquindo with plants of 1,000 square meters, where the corporate and technological world will be. “In this one, we are in negotiation with several companies in the sector. Some of them are changing their corporate headquarters from the center of Santiago to this sector”, says Ignacio Salazar.
The large company will be in the MUT Encomenderos building -with 900 square meter floors. And there are already advanced negotiations with three users who require large surfaces with the option of joining the floors with an internal staircase.
The third tower is MUT Roger de Flor, which has floors of 700 square meters and is intended to house medium-sized technology companies and the entrepreneurial world. “We have created the concept of flexible offices that are independent and private, but with the option of sharing common spaces of lesser use to reduce the monthly fixed cost, such as conference rooms, reception and places of recreation, such as the roofs of buildings. ”, says the Territory partner.
The place includes a Bike Hub for 2,000 bicycles, as well as a beer garden -space around the independent craft brewery- and the market, which -according to Salazar- makes sense for companies that want to make a smart investment in attracting talent. “Those are the companies we are talking to, all of which are young, innovative and very oriented to the economy of the future,” he stresses.
The three buildings will be handed over to future occupants between July and September. The building that is on the corner of El Bosque with Apoquindo, in 2023.
At the end of 2021, the vacancy of Class A offices in Las Condes was around 6.8%, according to the real estate consultancy JLL. In Providencia that figure reaches 19.3%. Salazar, however, points out that the myth of the 100% virtual office has been crumbling to be replaced by a mixed equation that favors them. “The company, for reasons of promoting its internal culture, attracting and retaining talent and fostering innovation, requires that its collaborators interact periodically. This means that there has been a demand for fewer square meters, but more flexible and of higher quality and, in that line, MUT offers something that is not in other projects”, he underlines.
Today, the construction of a large part of the initiative is already 90% complete. And everything goes to start opening it to the public. The art exhibition in the coming weeks will thus begin to outline the debut of Mercado Urbano Tobalaba.
Territoria’s other developments
In 2019, Territoria acquired 9,900 m2 on the northeast corner of Vespucio and Presidente Riesco. In that location they will build a mixed-use project, with class A offices, commerce, gastronomy, cultural spaces, and plazas. Plans point to inaugurating Territoria Vespucio in the second half of 2024.
This is the latest in a series of initiatives that the company has in its portfolio. Linked to the architect Francisco Rencoret and the lawyer Ignacio Salazar, Territoria emerged 25 years ago and from then on they have been the promoters of various developments. The first was a high-end building in Isidora Goyenechea, called La Pastora, which debuted in 1997. They assure that it was one of the first class A office towers built in the El Golf business district. To it would be added several in the same sector: in El Regidor, Luz street, Magdalena, to crown in 2009 with the emblematic Isidora 3000 that contains the Hotel W, and that in 2010 was sold to the American fund Prudential, in about US$ 105 million of that time; A year earlier, the Luz office building had been sold to the CGE group, which completed its construction.
In 2012 they added El Bosque Territory on Apoquindo Avenue. It involved 16,603 square meters of office space and was sold to GLL Real Estate Partners in 2013.
And although their initiatives have focused on office towers and mixed developments, they were also the developers of the Hotel Awasi in San Pedro de Atacama. They built it in 2006 and operated it directly until 2009, the year in which it was handed over to private investors.
Now, Mercado Urbano Tobalaba is added, the first with the investment fund Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA). And they go for more.