SM Prime Holdings, Inc. inaugurated yesterday the SM City Marikina, its 31st shopping mall in the country.

Located along the Marcos Highway, it occupies a 59,000 square meters (sqm) of land and has a gross floor area (GFA) of 125,000 sqm.

Total leasable area is 58,000 sqm with SM department store and supermarket occupying 18,500 sqm and 10,000 sqm, respectively. Its main anchor tenants are SM Department Store and an SM Supermarket.

In a related development, SM Investments Corporation (SM) has signed its third management agreement with Carlson Hotels Worldwide – Asia Pacific (Carlson), this time for Carlson to manage SMIC’s 400-room hotel in Cebu City.

SMIC said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday that its hotel in Cebu will open in the first quarter of next year, and will be known as the Radisson Hotel Cebu.

The Radisson Hotel Cebu will offer its clients 10 meeting rooms, a 1,000-square meter ballroom, a spa and fitness center, a lobby lounge, and an all-day dining restaurant, among others.

It is strategically located in the heart of Cebu City, only two kilometers from the central business district and less than 20 kilometers from the airport.

‘We already enjoy an exceptionally synergistic relationship with the Carlson Group, having them in our Manila Bay location,’ said senior vice president for SMIC’s hotel group Merrill Yu.

He added that ‘It makes sense to extend this to our product in Cebu and reap the tangible rewards of an established partnership.’

SMIC’s two previous agreements with Carlson were for the management of the conglomerate’s two upcoming hotels in the Mall of Asia Complex in Pasay City, namely, The Regent Manila Bay and Radisson Manila Bay.

Both hotels, which will uniquely share the same building structure, will cost P2.4 billion to build and are scheduled to open in 2010. Radisson and The Regent are two of Carlson’s full service hotel brands.

Under the project’s innovative concept, which showcases a unique ‘hotel-within-a-hotel’ design, the two hotels will share the same building, with the luxurious Regent Manila Bay City housed within the Radisson Hotel Manila Bay City.

Both, however, will have their own separate driveways, entrances, lobbies, guest facilities, and staff.

The Radisson will have 500 guest rooms, while the Regent will offer 80 large and plush suites, including a 400 square meter presidential suite.

The two hotels will have first rate amenities such as business centers, swimming pools, fine-dining restaurants, and extensive function facilities.

Carlson is an internationally recognized hotel group, which currently has about 9,000 rooms in operation and more than 10,000 rooms under development across the Asia-Pacific region.

In addition, it is one of the world’s ten largest hotel companies in terms of the number of properties managed.