Written by Victor C. Agustin

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.

Money-go-round

• Unlike last year when he took line honors, luck was not on the side of former San Miguel chairman Andres Soriano III in this year’s just-concluded edition of the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup in Costa Esmeralda, with his Alegre coming in last of the eight yachts that took part in the Mini Maxi Racing Group.
• Senator Benigno Aquino III has a total of 301,792 shares in his name in the hardly traded Central Azucarera de Tarlac that he can readily unload if he is serious in his musing that he wants the Aquino side of the family to dispose of Hacienda Luisita and the related sugar mill company because of all the labor and debt-related problems.

Depending on the market valuation, the Noynoc bloc in the money-losing sugar mill could be worth anywhere between P900,000 to P1.5 million.

Heard through the grapevine

Gabriela and other feminist groups supporting the legal battle of Rachel Singson, the common-law wife of Ilocos Sur kingpin Luis “Chavit” Singson, are in for a nasty surprise should the case go on full trial.

According to the grapevine, Chavit had secretly set up closed circuit cameras within the Greenmeadows townhouse that he had rented for his ex-wife and has in possession incriminating conversations and, worse, embarrassing video tapes of Mrs. Singson and her secret visitors.