AVIDA

Transforming land, names, and lives

Since it developed the vast tract of swamp land that is now the bustling city of Makati, Ayala Corporation has become a name indelibly etched in the minds of Filipinos as a visionary developer of land, as a builder of dreams.

Yet, it was only in 1988 when Ayala Corporation spun off its real estate division into a separate company, giving birth to Ayala Land Inc. (ALI).

ALI then was primarily associated with high-end projects, whether central business districts, commercial centers, or exclusive family residences, found mostly in Makati and Alabang in Muntinlupa City.

www.avidaland.com

ALVEO

With foresight brought about by many successful years in the industry, the Philippines' leading real estate developer, Ayala Land, Inc., conceived a company dedicated to building homes that answer the needs of a rapidly expanding market - the urban achievers. So on September 29, 1995, upon registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), this fully-owned subsidiary of Ayala Land was born. Operating at the Ayala Life Building, Madrigal Business Park in Alabang, we began to play our strategic role in revolutionizing the way communities are created.

By February 26, 2002, while in the planning stage of our very first development, we took on the name Community Innovations Incorporated (CII). It was a move that reinforced our commitment to providing specially designed living environments for the unique needs of our discerning market. Along with the new name was a prominent new office address - the 18th floor of Tower One & Exchange Plaza, Ayala Avenue in Makati City, the country's premier business hub.

Community Innovations officially opened its door for commercial operations on March 1, 2002, and since then, it has evolved into one of the fastest-growing real estate companies in the country. Shortly after, CII has proudly built not only well-designed developments, but also flourishing communities. Verdana Homes Bacoor, Verdana Homes Mamplasan Verdana Village Center, Two Serendra, The Columns Ayala Avenue, The Columns Legazpi Village, and Celadon Residences - all superior developments bearing the mark of CII's expertise and passion for innovation.

As our dedication to our customers deepened, the qualities that defined us as a real estate company had likewise risen to a whole new level-sharper foresight, unparalleled excellence, and total commitment. To mark this milestone, last July 23, 2008, we changed our name from Community Innovations to one that reaches out to a wider aspect of living, Alveo Land Corp. Alveo, derived from the Latin word Salveo, means "to be well." And as a company, we don't just find the means to build the most innovative homes; we look for ways to give you the life you deserve.

www.alveoland.com.ph

City Hall stops excavation for twin 50- storey condos

 There was a loud crash past 1 p.m., then the second floor of the house tilted.

“My nephews thought there was an earthquake because the house moved,” said 29-year-old house renter Jonah Pacheco in Cebuano.

The two boys, an uncle and a teenage neighbor, were lucky to get out alive.

A meter away, a retention wall collapsed in the excavation site for a twin 50-story condominium project of Taft Property in barangay Cogon Ramos, Cebu City.

Eight other houses of light materials near the edge of the excavation pit also collapsed. No one was injured as most of the occupants were out at work.

The Office of the Building Official (OBO) under the Cebu City mayor’s office immediately issued a cease-and-desist order stopping excavation work until safety measures are in place and an investigation is made.

Cebu City Administrator Jose Marie Poblete said the order was issued against Taft Property Venture Development Corp. whose management promised to pay for the damaged houses. Poblete, who is a civil engineer and lawyer, said the “weight” and “strength” of the “retaining wall” may have been inadequate. The excavation, part of the foundation of the tower condominiums, appear deep enough to fit a three-story building at 30 meters tall and 15 meters wide.

Lawyer Vincent Tomaneng, Taft Property spokesman, said the company will undertake “corrective measures” and send experts to prevent further damage. He identified the contractor for the excavation work as ASDEC Corp., a Manila-based firm.

“We are doing everything we can. We will take care of the families affected. . . We will shoulder the necessary expenses,” said the lawyer.

“We conducted a soil test before we did the excavation.”

The twin condominium towers called Horizons 101 is designed to be the tallest commercial building in Cebu City when completed, even higher than the Crown Regency hotel a few blocks away.The concrete wall was a “slope protection structure.”

Cogon-Central Ramos barangay captain Omar Durano said 20 affected families in eight houses in the Dela Rama Compound near the excavation site were relocated to pension houses in Cebu City paid for by Taft Property. The houses were about one meter away from the excavation wall that crumbled. Sitio Sta. Teresita has about 1,500 residents and is the biggest sitio in the barangay, said Durano.

Other residents living within 15 meters from the excavation wall have to move out as a preventive measure, said Alvin Santillan, head of the Cebu City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council.

A cordon was already set up around the site when Cebu Daily News visited.

“May’ gani naa ko sa gawas (Good thing I was outside the house.),” said Pacheco, who rents a two-story house beside the wall.

Pacheco said that she’s lived in the house in sitio Sta. Teresita for more than 20 years.

She was chatting with neighbors in a sari-sari store three meters from the house when the wall collapsed. Pacheco recalled hearing a loud crash.

Her elder brother Jade and her two visiting nephews aged 17 and 9 together with an 11-year-old neighbor were watching television in the bedroom on the second floor.

The boys quickly locked the bedroom door and hid under the table. Jade, 37, later led them out to safety.

“They panicked. I was worried because the appliances were left on. I told my brother to turn off the electric switch,” Pacheco said.

The house is still standing but appears tilted.

When the second floor slanted, Pacheco said her washing machine and gas stove were thrown down the pit. The house renter said she belatedly noticed cracks in their concrete floor last February, something she linked to the excavation work in sitio Teresita, which started August last year.

She said she didn’t immediately notice the cracks because the floor was covered with a carpet. Pacheco said the family complained to Taft Property about the cracks and the company repaired them. Excavation work at the site went on 24 hours a day, a noisy operation that would make her house shake, said Pacheco and several neighbors.

“Naanad nalang mi (We just got used to it),” Pacheco said.

“Nakuyawan pud mi pero kumpiyansa lang (We got scared but we were just complacent about).” /Rhea Ruth V. Rosell, Correspondent.

cebudailynews.wordpress.com

Ayala Malls go green

Jamille Lea – Ann C. Azanza UP Masscom intern

AYALA Center Cebu campaigned for the Green Friday promo last March 9.

The official launching was held at the Ayala Terraces last March 30.

The launching event aspires to support Mother Earth by encouraging shoppers to use an eco bag every Friday.

Janice Parreño, marketing manager of Ayala Center Cebu, said that the campaign has two folds. The first part is for the mall to require their merchants to start using biodegradable plastics, or to avoid plastic bags completely. The second fold’s drive is geared towards the shoppers. “We want shoppers to start using their own recyclable or biodegradable bags every Friday.”

In line with this, participating shoppers will be entitled to one raffle coupon for a minimum P100 single-receipt purchase whenever they won’t use a plastic bag when shopping. Major prizes await winners: Avida House and Lot, and El Nido, Palawan Travel Packages. The promo will run until June 8, 2012.

“That’s an added incentive to really build the habit for shoppers. We want this initiative to start from us; we don’t want to wait to have it mandated by the government with the proposal of laws and ordinances that may take long to take effect,” Parreño added.

The launch partnered with Havaianas slippers. Ayala Malls also has committed to plant 100 trees for every 10,000 raffle coupons in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund.

“It takes a village to actually push people and educate them about this campaign, we want to involve as many people as possible to this campaign,” Parreño said.

Eco bags, which are handy, are sold at an affordable price (P50) and can be bought at the privilege desk of any of the Ayala Malls.

Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on April 11, 2012.

http://www.sunstar.com.ph/cebu/lifestyle/2012/04/10/ayala-malls-go-green-215552

With GPS Data Out, Feds Eye Warrantless Cell Phone Surveillance

• By David Kravets
• Email Author
• March 31, 2012 | 
• 5:13 pm

Prosectors are shifting their focus to warrantless cell-tower locational tracking of suspects in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that law enforcement should acquire probable-cause warrants from judges to affix GPS devices to vehicles and monitor their every move, according to court records.

The change of strategy comes in the case the justices decided in January, when it reversed the life sentence of a District of Columbia area drug dealer, Antoine Jones, who was the subject of 28 days of warrantless GPS surveillance via a device the FBI secretly attached to his vehicle without a warrant. In the wake of Jones’ decision, the FBI has pulled the plug on 3,000 GPS tracking devices.

In a Friday filing in pre-trial proceedings of Jones retrial, Jones attorney’ said the government has five months worth of a different kind of locational tracking information on his client: So-called cell-site information, obtained without a warrant, chronicling where Jones was when he made and received mobile phone calls in 2005.

“In this case, the government seeks to do with cell site data what it cannot do with the suppressed GPS data,” attorney Eduardo Balarezo wrote (.pdf) U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle.

Balarezo added:

The government has produced material obtained through court orders for the relevant cellular telephone numbers. Upon information and belief, now that the illegally obtained GPS data cannot be used as evidence in this case, the government will seek to introduce cell site data in its place in an attempt to demonstrate Mr. Jones’ movements and whereabouts during relevant times. Mr. Jones submits that the government obtained the cell site data in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and therefore it must be suppressed.

Just as the lower courts were mixed on whether the police could secretly affix a GPS device on a suspect’s car without a warrant, the same is now true about whether a probable-cause warrant is required to obtain so-called cell-site data.

A lower court judge in the Jones case had authorized the five months of the cell-site data without probable cause, based on government assertions that the data was “relevant and material” to an investigation.

“Knowing the location of the trafficker when such telephone calls are made will assist law enforcement in discovering the location of the premises in which the trafficker maintains his supply narcotics, paraphernalia used in narcotics trafficking such as cutting and packaging materials, and other evident of illegal narcotics trafficking, including records and financial information,” the government wrote in 2005, when requesting Jones’ cell-site data.

That cell-site information was not introduced at trial, as the authorities used the GPS data for the same function.

The Supreme Court tossed that GPS data, along with Jones’ conviction, on January 23.

The justices agreed to decide Jones’ case in a bid to settle conflicting lower-court decisions — some of which ruled a warrant was necessary, while others found the government had unchecked GPS surveillance powers.

“We hold that the government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search,’” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the five-justice majority.

The government has maintained in a different case on appeal that cell-site data is distinguishable from GPS-derived data. District of Columbia prosecutors are expected to lodge their papers on the issue by April 6 in the Jones case.

Among other things, the government maintains Americans have no expectation of privacy of such cell-site records because they are “in the possession of a third party” (.pdf) — the mobile phone companies. What’s more, the authorities maintain that the cell site data is not as precise as GPS tracking and, “there is no trespass or physical intrusion on a customer’s cell phone when the government obtains historical cell-site records from a provider.”

In the Jones case, the Supreme Court agreed with an appeals court that Jones’ rights had been violated by the month-long warrantless attachment of a GPS device underneath his car. Scalia’s majority opinion, which was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor, said placing the device on the suspect’s car amounted to a search. (.pdf)

www.landasiacebu.com

Real Estate Broker Licensure Exam Results Released in Six Working Days

The Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) announces that 3,192 out of 4,801
passed the Real Estate Broker Licensure Examination given by the Board of Real Estate Service in Manila, Baguio, Cagayan de Oro, Cebu, Davao, Iloilo and Legazpi this March 2012.

The members of the Board of Real Estate Service who gave the licensure
examination are Chairman, Dr. Eduardo G. Ong, Members, Ramon C.F. Cuervo III,
Florentino C. Diño II & Rafael M. Fajardo.

The results were released in six (6) working days after the last day of examination. Registration for the issuance of Professional Identification Card (ID) and Certificate of Registration will start on Thursday, March 29, 2012 until Tuesday, April 10, 2012. Those who will register are required to bring the following: duly accomplished Oath Form or Panunumpa ng Propesyonal, current Community Tax Certificate (cedula), 2 pieces passport size picture (colored with white background and complete nametag), 1 piece 1” x 1” picture (colored with white background and complete nametag), 2 sets of metered documentary stamps and 1 short brown envelope with name and profession and submission of Original Surety Bond, minimum amount of which is P 20,000.00, with the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC)/Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) as Obligee and to pay the Initial Registration Fee of P600 and Annual Registration Fee of P450 for 2012 to2015. Successful examinees should personally register and sign in the Roster of Registered Professionals.

www.licensedrealestatepractitioners.com

BI keeps an eye on Palawan ex-governor

A lookout bulletin memorandum (LBM) was issued yesterday against former Palawan Governor Joel Reyes and several others in connection with the January 24, 2011 killing of broadcast journalist Gerardo “Gerry” Ortega.

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima in a two-page memorandum ordered the Bureau of Immigration “to be on the lookout on” Reyes, et al. “should any of them pass through immigration counter in any international airport.”

Reyes’ brother Coron Mayor Mario Reyes Jr., former provincial administrator Romeo Seratubias, close-in aide Arturo Regalado and Valentin Lecias were also included in the LBM.

De Lima said unlike a watchlist order or hold departure order, an LBM would not prevent Reyes and his cop-accused from leaving the country.

The DOJ chief said an outstanding temporary restraining order from the Supreme Court prevented her office from issuing a hold departure order against Reyes, et al.

“Relative thereto, please find the attached copy of the memorandum dated March 13, 2012, wherein the Secretary of Justice directed the Commissioner of Immigration “to instruct all immigration officers to be on the lookout for the following accused should any of them pass through the immigration counters in any of our international airports and/or seaports.”

In the meantime, Mika, the eldest daughter of Ortega, lauded De Lima for issuing the directive.

She said they were hopeful the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of the Puerto Princesa City handling the case would issue an HDO and warrant of arrest against Reyes which were expected to be released on Tuesday.

“Tuesday (today) might be the earliest for issuance of warrant,” Mika stressed.

On March 13, the DOJ indicted Reyes (MJT) and several others for murder charges after the DOJ reversed its own ruling in connection with the killing of Ortega.

The panel of prosecutors in its new ruling found probable cause to indict Reyes, et al. for the crime.

Although the panel upheld the finding of probable cause against those previously indicted—and are behind bars— for murder, namely, Rodolfo Edrad, Jr., Armando Noel, Jr., Dennis Aranas, and Arwin Arandia, it reversed the finding of insufficiency of evidence in the same charge against Reyes, et al.

The panel, however, found no enough evidence to charge Jose Antonio Carrion, former Marinduque governor as there was no sufficient proof presented to prove that he was part of the alleged conspiracy.


www.manilatimes.net